


ffxv -- chocobo's grab bag

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, M/M, One Shot Collection, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Various AUs, Warnings In Chapter Notes, various pairings - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2019-09-21 12:50:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 30,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17044076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: In which I'll be collecting my ffxv one-shots from now on. I'll also be moving the quick ficlets I've posted on myninemoons42-lestallumhavenside blog over, gradually.Various notes and explanations in the header notes for each chapter.





	1. blade-poetry, blood-lust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because of course I'll write something that has to do with murder!Ignis. :D You do know I like that kind of character, right?

He can hear, as if he were only hearing himself at a very distant second-hand, the rattle and the rale of his own breaths, stuttering, catching like crystal-shards in his chest, pushed out with much effort into the clear air, into the threat of oncoming snowstorms. He can hear, as if from much too far away, the beat of his heart, steady and fierce and -- perhaps only a little louder. Only a little more laden or leaden with effort.

His shoulders are beginning to hurt: and now he has to watch his feet as well. Can’t do now to wind up stepping in it, to wind up with his knees cut down from beneath him, with all these bothersome falling objects all around him and the sprays of gouting dark red that decorate the walls, the closed quarters, his knives working in and out in a rhythm that he can keep up for hours, has kept up for hours, only -- 

He looks up, then, and it’s almost a disappointment: because the end of the corridor is in sight. A T-intersection, and windows looking out onto an indifferent city, somewhere in the last seconds of the night. Somewhere in the last minutes of this mission, this maddening trek, and for -- what, really? What has he been sent here for?

He doesn’t have to touch the pocket sewn into the innermost lining of his coat -- he doesn’t have to feel that he’s still carrying a single slim-line hard drive, one that he hadn’t started the night with. Pried out of someone’s desktop computer with no more than a series of popped latches and one stubborn stay-screw, for which he’d simply employed the nail on his little finger to start twisting out of its socket. Information, dossiers, files, someone’s collection of illicit pictures? What does he care what the drive might contain? All he knows is that he’s gone to collect it and it’s now safely in his keeping, and now he just has to get through all these other bodies -- these inconvenient obstacles -- and then he can wash his hands.

Scream, raging, from far too close by: he winces, slides past the outstretched fist and the chromed barrel of some gaudy gun, gets himself out of the way of the tracking returning fire and he switches his grip on one of his knives, turns it backhanded and then drives the lethal edges through throat, through vocal cords, and in the blessed gurgling silence he cuts right through artery and vein and his attacker drops to the floor, dying in a gush of scarlet.

At the T-intersection he turns around and shakes the blood off his knives and surveys his handiwork: a corridor full of corpses.

Messy, the last bit, and he winces again, shakes out his shoulders again, and then there’s a crackle in his ear, a quiet delayed hum. “Still there, Ignis?”

“I suppose I am,” he says, looking every which way he can because he thinks he’s making himself a target, standing here, waiting almost aimlessly, and head cocked to listen for the voice on the radio. “Extraction?”

“About that,” and he hears frantic annoyed muttering beneath the faint wash of static. “Change of plans.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“This happens far too often,” and he hears the long hiss that must be Lunafreya taking a steadying drag off whatever she’s smoking tonight. “It’s almost like they’re learning to anticipate us.”

“Almost. Do you need me to find my own way out.”

“We’re not outmaneuvered, not yet,” she growls. “Up to the rooftop, get.”

“And then?”

“I’ll have things figured out by then.”

He doesn’t answer -- the door at the end of the corridor crashes open and this time it disgorges silent soldiers, rifles already tracking in his direction, and he forgoes his dignity and the protest in his knees. Drops to a crouch. Runs, as best as he can, around into scant cover and there’s no fighting back from this, not when they’ve got bigger bullets, not when they’re laying down a lot of suppressing fire and then he thinks about swearing, venting, when he catches his breath and -- 

Hand, hand, reaching out for him from a door and -- where had the door come from, and who was this, who was this, ski goggles and knitted cap and the offer of a carbine, that he takes and checks and he puts a smoking hole right into the helmet of the first of his pursuers. The sound of that bullet impact is so loud, echoing like madness in the room -- 

The room, the gun, the unexpected presence next to him: who takes off their goggles and thumbs their nose at him.

Hair like white-spun gold, violet-blue eyes, and the scars hidden in the multitude of freckles. The white line crossing the bridge of the nose. 

“Wasn’t expecting to run into you here,” he hears Prompto say.

“This gun says otherwise,” and Ignis is bracing again, squeezing off another volley of shots and Prompto grins like a mean feral beast, and uses that volley as cover, sniping off three and four more attackers in the space of a handful of breaths. 

Blacked-out shapes in his hands, extended barrels, extended magazines, and the acrid smoke that wreathes his bloodthirsty smile.

That comes closer and closer in a lull and he’s pulling Ignis closer, whispering in the direction of his transceiver: “Lunafreya.”

“Holy shit where have you been,” is the hissed response, clear and cold in Ignis’s ear, that he passes on to Prompto -- in the exact same inflections. 

“Loose ends,” Prompto says. “Done with that now. Where do you need us to be?”

Again Ignis relays the response: “If you have an exit strategy, take Ignis with you. If not -- ”

“If not, we make our own, business as usual,” and this time he’s answering for himself, and he cuts his eyes toward the casual way that Prompto is reloading one of his pistols. 

“Then come back alive,” he hears Luna say.

“I like your hands a lot,” and that’s Prompto, cackling softly to himself as he brushes a cold gloved finger over Ignis’s knuckles. “Something about the red. Brown. I like it a lot on you.”

He rolls his eyes. “Get me out of here.”

“Way ahead of you.”

He sprints after Prompto to the windows of the room -- one single strike of a booted foot and one of the full-length panes shatters, sharp shapes falling outward -- coils of cable that had been looped and knotted in the small of Prompto’s back, hook that he quickly assembles from a pocket in his lower leg -- there’s something unnatural with the accuracy of him, as he throws the hook across the gap between this building and the next and the hook finds an open window, construction temporarily halted, tarpaulins fluttering in the icy winds. 

“What,” Ignis begins.

“Had that all waiting,” is Prompto’s answer. “I can get out easy, I might as well get you out too.”

“My hero,” he deadpans, and he seizes Prompto with those same bloody hands and holds on, every muscle tense in the swing, the momentary flight and fall -- 

And they’re across, and Prompto is -- kissing him, and he smears the blood that hasn’t yet dried on his hands onto those windburned freckles.


	2. prince of cats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the Miqo'te get-up Noctis gets to wear in the ffxiv x ffxv collaboration, natch.

Maybe he holds his breath a little, maybe not, but he’s damn grateful all the same that the wi-fi signal seems to hold even out here in the middle of seemingly nowhere: beneath the cold crisp night and the stars shivering into visibility, the colors of them sparking far overhead as he uploads today’s photographs into his private online storage account. 

Lucky day, he thinks, seeing the handful of photos he’s chosen to keep as they get archived, one by one. Here’s a shot of Ignis and Gladio standing back to back over the corpse of a coeurl, and here’s a shot of Noctis fishing, with the colors of the sky catching in the water at his feet. Here’s a shot of a ragged patch of wildflowers, pretty star-shapes in wind-blown shrubbery and the coarse pitted rock of this region. Here’s a shot of their chocobos, heads bent attentively to their lunch of gysahl greens. 

One more shot and then -- 

Is it that he hears the very quiet step behind him, first? The barest pressure, the barest presence, the barest sound of a boot hitting the ground behind him -- can’t be an enemy, not when they’re within the blue-lit safety of a haven, so that’s got to be someone he knows and there are only three other people here with him. But the step is so much quieter than he’s already used to -- and all of the guys know how to move like shadows when they want to -- that he hears this one, might be a clue.

Or is it the sinuous flicker of movement that catches in his peripheral vision? Black curve tipped in white, contrasting, easy to follow even in the failing light and the dimmed glow of his smartphone’s screen. 

Either way: the presence that’s coming up on him is welcome, wandering back to him, and now Prompto thinks he hears the others mildly complaining -- mostly he hears the half-amused “Hey, come back”, Gladio’s not-quite-plea -- which really seals the deal for him and he makes sure he’s done with his phone, with his uploads, and then he puts the device away on the ground and turns, grins, hopes he looks inviting. “Hi.”

Triangular points of softly tufted fur, sticking out of gelled and styled hair: forward and up, ears almost at attention. Eyes halfway to closed, those brilliant blue irises muted in the fading light of the day. Tail, only the very tip moving, relaxed and mostly upright.

Noctis, still sporting the cat ears and tail from -- whatever magic they’d stumbled straight into from a series of strange sorties, the encounters with a winged spirit of vengeance and storm-winds.

“Can I?”

“Yeah, of course, come here,” and Prompto still has only a moment to marvel at the sudden transition from -- skittish to safe.

He puts his arms very carefully, very gingerly, around Noctis’s shoulders, and hauls him in closer; and his reward is that tail wrapping around his wrist, and the weight of Noctis slumping comfortably against his chest. 

“Gonna pet your ears, you want that?” he asks, quietly, because Noctis is closing his eyes and breathing more slowly, more heavily, squirming just a little closer.

“Please.”

It’s easy, then, to rake his free hand through Noctis’s hair. To scrub his knuckles gently but thoroughly around the bases of those cat-ears. He doesn’t move the hand that Noctis has trapped with his tail; he lets Noctis capture that one, holding it in both of his hands.

He doesn’t honestly know when the purring starts: he just feels the deep soothing rumbling of it, running through him, and he sighs and presses a kiss to Noctis’s temple, and then it’s not really a surprise when there’s a corresponding brush of warmth against his throat.

“Stay as long as you want,” he whispers, against the tip of one cat-ear, that twitches against his words.

“If I leave will you let me come back?”

“Always,” he says, and he knows he means it, and not just for these moments of Noctis sitting with him. The odd paradox of being held, when he’s the only one performing the actual mechanics of holding on to this presence of the boy, the prince, the cat. The weight of Noctis leaning gently into him, breathing the same air, warming him up.

He sighs because the moment is soon broken -- it always is because Noctis is Noctis and a cat at the same time, wandering away, stepping gingerly out of Prompto’s lap -- but he sighs, too, for the phantoms of warmth Noctis leaves behind in his wake, like tangible promises.

He sighs, and waits, and he can be patient, he can keep going without that feline imperious presence, knowing he’ll be graced with it again, knowing he’ll get to hold Noctis again, because Noctis comes back. 

He will come back, Prompto thinks, and waits.


	3. what more can I see (what more can I say)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised a dear friend of mine I'd write some Ignyx angst for the holiday.
> 
> Get out some tissues for this one, folx: canon compliant, set in the last nights of the World of Ruin, after fighting a certain Psychomancer.

“Ignis.”

It’s -- a kind of sick thrill. A kind of greasy broken-bone relief. A kind of grating on his nerves that he welcomes. At least the words are out in the open. The wound has been lanced.

He’ll bleed for a while yet; he’ll weep for a while yet. (What a surprise that still is: burned away, his eyes, but not his tears. The salt that sticks to his cheeks, that gathers in bitter-tasting spots in the corners of his mouth.) “Yes. I’m here.”

The rustle from close by -- not nearly close enough to touch and he’s grateful for that in a way that he can’t quite find the words for -- tells him that it’s Prompto who’s come into the room. The movement of leather and tartan-patterned cloth. The quiet tread of boots against the floor, and the slight whistling weight of his breaths in this enclosed space. The squish of one of the sleeping bags being unfolded, where he himself had deposited them: one to each bare mattress.

“Talk if you like,” he hears Prompto say, far too gently, after a moment. He should really stop being taken aback by the fact that the boy is on such an intimate basis with -- calming someone else down. He should really stop being surprised when Prompto knows how to calm them all down, and more importantly knows how to calm himself down after a panic attack. Prompto rescues himself from these things. 

“If you don’t want to talk, if you just want to -- do whatever -- I’m just here to make sure you survive it.”

“Brave of you to assume,” Ignis lets himself mutter, “that I won’t just maim you or murder you, before doing something equally heinous to myself.”

“Well, there’s that,” and there’s a chuckle on the edges of the words, too brittle, too many bullet-powdered edges. “But I’m still a better -- sacrifice, or maybe scapegoat, I don’t really know what the word is -- than Gladio. Or Noct.”

Pang, like blades driven into his own chest, though their impact is greatly dulled by the grief ramming its hooks into his heart. New grief, fresh grief, daemon-stained, like drying and tightening blood on his fingertips that he can’t scrub away. “How is he. How is Noctis.”

“Wouldn’t know. He’s not talking to me. He’s still somewhere in the corridors as far as I know, but he closed all the doors behind him, which means -- I can’t get through. And if I can’t, then no one can. So I’m here with you.”

“I’m making him worry.” How he wishes he could look at his hands properly. He can feel the long slashes. He can feel the distant and rising pain. He can feel the shake in his fingers, the clammy textures of his own palms. 

“Can’t you worry about yourself? About those knives?”

And there, right there, that’s the grief. That’s the pain lodged right in the center of Ignis’s chest. In the center of his very being.

Grief, and terror, and a molten hatred that chokes him with rage.

He can’t help but flash back to -- frost on his skin, like protective layers that left him shivering and safe -- or at least more marginally effective against the enemy that they’d fought. The others had shouted, helpfully: 

“Eyes, Ignis, go higher! Go for its eyes!”

“Sweep low, attack from your knees, I’ll get him from the top!”

“Iggy! With me -- you’re second strike -- on my mark -- MARK.”

And the rattle and the clash of bone-blades, bone-weapons. Unearthly hissing, howling, rising into an indignant scream and he’d felt the others as they redoubled their efforts. Heard the battle-cry falling from Prompto’s mouth. Felt the incessant warp-rush of Noctis, striking again and again, ferocious and wild. Shaken with the impacts of Gladio’s blade, again and again, against the enemy -- 

“What the fuck was that and why did we go looking for it?”

“I will not rest until every corner of this city, my city, is scoured clean.”

“Yes, and -- the rest of it, Noct?”

“I swore to lead the Glaive. I asked them to fight with me. If I can, I’ll clear the way for them.”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I’m saying, at some point -- we’ll wear ourselves out too.”

The bickering had become familiar, again, so soon after a silence of ten years. Prompto and Noctis all but hissing at each other, their voices overlapping, no echoes to separate them and that meant they were having that conversation in close proximity, frustration and weariness and affection, and underneath it all a strained understanding -- 

And then he remembers: the footstep behind him. His tension, the renewed bite of a dagger-grip in his hand and -- 

“Ignis, stand down. You have to stand down. And -- brace.”

“I am not injured, Gladiolus,” he’d said, stiff with wounds and pride anyway.

“I mean it this time. Don’t fight me on this. Open your hands.”

“Gladiolus. What the fuck,” he’d almost snarled.

Silence, sudden, where Noctis and Prompto had still been talking.

And the weight that had been placed into his hands. Weight, balance -- even the unmistakable tiny rattle of beads, none of them perfectly circular, the irregular sides and rounded edges.

Ignis, plunged into the dark as he’d been -- as he is now -- it’s all he can do to keep holding on to the things that he’d been handed. The things that had been passed on to him.

How, he thinks, and he feels the ache in his jaw, and that’s when he knows he’s gritting his teeth and -- every nerve hurts. Not with physical pain -- that’s not what he feels at all, because there’s something worse, there’s something more insidious living in him now: like the worst kind of canker, like the worst kind of wasting.

He turns one hand, and then the other, and his fingers fit themselves around the beautiful grips. He can see them, clearly, in his memories: a little large for him, and the off-center alignment of the weights in the butt-ends. The fluttering movement of the beads, blue and yellow and green in clashing shades, to counter dead black.

Two knives. Two blades. Mismatched blades: the hooking shape of one, the sinuous curve of the other, and the multitude of cutting edges. 

Only one person he’d ever known to carry -- asymmetrically. Two weapons of roughly the same length, but they might as well have been two entirely different implements. The differing distribution of weight and sharpness along each blade. One to slash skin and hide and armor open, exposing the softer parts within; and the other for attacking those same softer parts, thrusting and biting deep, stabbing.

Everyone else -- and he includes himself in that assessment -- carries two of a weapon. Two knives, two guns. The same weapon, duplicated, to be used in two hands.

Not the one who had carried these kukris. Not this mismatched set, black-bladed beautiful.

And he’s crying again, crying afresh, soundless and no less shattered.

He takes the slashing blade up and turns it, side to side, as though he were trying to sight down the outer curves. A knife like a river-bend, all curved lines, the better to lay more cutting edges bare. 

The other: on the blunt faces of the knife he traces out the hook of its shape, the wicked short spike on the inner curve, to add extra insult to a stab wound; and the squared-off upper edge, sharpness that makes him think of cleaving the very wind.

A name falls from his mouth, unbidden, gall and poison and tears: “Nyx.”

Hiss of breath that isn’t his, some kind of displaced air, some kind of weak thump. 

“No way,” he hears Prompto mutter. “That, that can’t be -- that’s not -- that’s fucking wrong -- ”

“And yet you already know it. You would not deny it otherwise. Tell me.” He doesn’t know how he forces the words out, but he hears the echoes of them, caroming in this enclosed space.

“In Lestallum we, we found piles of rags that had belonged to -- ” He hears Prompto make an utterly frightened sound, somewhere between choking and sobbing. “Dino. Coctura. Fought a daemon that was nearly talking so fast. It was making sounds like the way Dino talked. The other daemon -- it had swords shaped like knives. Or knives blown up to the size of swords. Only possible conclusion, they’d been eaten by daemons, then turned into daemons. Returned to become enemies of -- human beings.”

“Go on,” he says, hissing.

“I know those knives too. I’ve seen them before. That name you said. Didn’t I -- ” Another panicked breath. “I saw you, once or twice, Ignis. You and -- and him. Nyx. Those are his weapons right?”

He grits out his response. “Were. He is -- no longer among the living, it seems. And, perhaps that is the blessing. No longer among the not-dead, either.”

“Fuck. We killed him. All four of us together. We killed him -- you, Ignis, you figured out that daemon was weak to ice and -- ”

“I was there, Prompto,” and some small part of him wants to apologize for speaking so harshly, so cruelly. Some small part of him wants to take back the cutting cold in his own words. Prompto has done nothing to deserve this -- 

“I think you had better leave,” he hears himself add, after a moment. “I may end up maiming you after all. That would be an unkindness, and you don’t deserve it, nor the churlishness of my present mood.”

“I volunteered to be here, Ignis,” is the answer he hears, though he has to wait for it. “I know who you are. I know who you’ve become. I’m afraid of you but I’m not leaving you, because I can’t. Because I won’t.”

“Afraid? You haven’t seen me afraid,” he mutters. He labors for every breath. Labors to keep his thoughts all in the same place, all flowing together. 

Traitorous memory. He would curse it out loud if he could only find the words.

The softness of freshly-washed hair, drenched in the scent of wind-bent trees and their tough needles. The tracery laid onto taut toned flesh and bone: scars entwined with ink. Beads in a lopsided small dish, knotted onto cords, destined to be part of a distinctive set of braids. Rank-patches, a different patina on each one. Gloves fitting precisely onto hands that had been healed in so many ways, bones gone crooked, joints gone out of true.

The complexities of one single voice. A plea to the dead, in the middle of the night. An insult and a prayer all at once, tossed towards the eye of a storm, right at the beginning of a tense mission. A melodious rasp, spitting out rapid-fire verses and wicked humor, as part of a festive celebration. A reverent curse, long low gasp, in the middle of lovemaking. 

He also remembers the moments of utter silence, and now -- now those moments are all he will have left in this world that has been stripped of that voice and that presence.

“How could you,” he hears himself mutter, then. “How could you -- fall?”

Silence, too, from Prompto’s side of the room. 

The kukris have fallen away from him in the mad whirl of his grief, his regret, and -- he reaches for one, now. He knows how to feel for the blades without nicking himself in the process -- and yet the pain would have been welcome, he thinks, as he picks up the stabbing knife.

He presses the perpendicular of its hilt to his mouth, and the blade is cold against his lips.

One last kiss, too, to the hilt of the slashing knife.

He vanishes them both into the corner of the Armiger that’s been set apart for him, and covers his face in his hands. “Leave me, please. I -- I beg you. I will be with you in a moment -- but give me the moment.”

“Okay.”

He barely hears the thud of Prompto’s footsteps, walking away: because he’s saying the words again, to nothing, to nobody, not even to the possibility of a ghost. 

“How could you fall?”


	4. riotfeathers vs crackshot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rule 63 band AU, with Noctis as the always-female character. Main pairing is Promptis, with hints of Gladnis scattered here and there. 
> 
> The band formed by the chocobros, Crackshot, is loosely based on L'Arc~en~Ciel.
> 
> (Skip ahead to the next chapters of this document if you're not into Rule 63, thanks :D)
> 
> (Rating changes to Explicit as of part five!)

part one: cross into distant dawn

Not the first time he curses his luck: and he knows he can’t say this out loud, not around the other guys, not where they can hear him or at the very least read what he’s sending into the chat room and then they’d both have words with him, and he’s not going for that right now, he’s got a rare night off and there’s no one to go out with, and there’s nowhere to go -– so he cracks open another beer, and seriously considers rolling himself a joint, but then there’s a different notification popping up onto his tablet and he squints, tilts his head, and he’d ignore the URL entirely, except that it’s been sent to him by Monica and he tends to trust her tastes, fanatically eclectic though that might be.

So he drinks half of the beer and clicks on and –-

He nearly jumps off his beatdown couch in surprise because it only takes the flourish of the cymbals, the long low shriek of the bass guitar, the shivering rising challenge of the melody played on the keyboard –- three measures, four at the most and he knows exactly what this song is and who’s performing it. The people who composed it, the people who’ve made it one of their signature tracks, one of the group’s favorite encore performances.

Luna and Aranea and Gen and Noctis -– Riotfeathers –- and the song is called “Against the Dying Shadow”, and they’re four angry beautiful voices rising in rage, rising in protest, and they’re playing to a tightly packed basement, and Prompto actually knows all the words to the song, mouths along as they shout out the third and fourth verses and –- then he clicks out of the tab entirely.

Here’s the thing, with Riotfeathers –- they’re not around any more. Ignis had called them a meteor of a band and -– Prompto still agrees with that assessment, now, even though he sort of hopes he’ll run into Aranea at least, because she’s still kicking around with a lot of the other performers in the scene and it’s still a small world, when it’s a world of soundstages and groupies and stadium tours, and then maybe he’ll have a snowball’s hope in hell to hear the actual story and reason why they suddenly dropped out.

(Family has its perks, he supposes, even though there is no tie of blood that could possibly exist between him and her. Just ink, and signatures on a legally binding document, and for them it’s been enough.)

The flat’s too small for him, suddenly, missing Aranea and wondering if the others are faring any better on this forced hiatus, and he leaves a voicemail on Monica’s phone -– _Are we ever getting fucking Crackshot back on the road?_ -– and then he throws on his jacket. 

Finds himself walking to the exact same club that Riotfeathers had been playing -– one of their last performances ever –- and his face is enough to get him through into the somewhat more barricaded section of the club, the narrow snaking mezzanine and its never, ever, ever safe railings.

Nodding at vaguely familiar faces in the gloom of the alcoves, and shaking Lightning’s hand when she holds it out to him, and then Prompto heads for the last table and -– it’s taken, too. Silver-sequinned clutch, and a long trailing strap in rainbow-stripes, and he allows himself a snort and –- he’s already steeling himself to head back down the stairs –- he might as well head back to the flat, too, as there’s nothing for him here –- and he turns.

Freezes.

She’s not so very tall, is the first thought -– dumb as it is –- that drops into the front of his mind. She certainly looks like she has super long legs, and she certainly dresses to show them off, in the shiny thigh-high boots with their tops folded down, and her lace-draped shift that covers her throat and her shoulders and her wrists but stops a full couple of inches above the tops of the boots. Silver chains threaded into her hair, far shorter than it had been in the video, and her face wiped clean of makeup, so he can see not just the beauty mark to the right of her mouth but also the faint remnants of the bruise ringing her left eye.

He wonders if the shiner hurts worse, considering the piercings in her left eyebrow.

Noctis. The girl who’d been the drummer for Riotfeathers, the girl who’d been wearing a ripped-up pinstriped suit in the video, fraying edges a startling contrast to the branch-lines of her hair ornament, gold gleam underneath the harsh stage lights.

Noctis, here?

“Noctis,” he says.

“Prompto,“ she says, and it’s a surprise that she knows his name, and it isn’t -– and she pulls her gloved hands down from her mouth. “You wanted the table.”

“You obviously got here first,” he says, and tries on a smile.

“Why, is there a rule that says I can’t share my –- that table?” And she’s smiling, too, lopsided and sharp. “Especially when you’re -– in a situation I know. Fairly intimately. Sick and tired of it, intimately.”

“How did you know,” he says, and he knows he’s being difficult and she knows it, too, if the way she rolls her eyes is any indication.

He sits, and she reclaims her purse, and when he pulls the flask out of his jacket she’s offering him one, too. 

“Trade,” he laughs, in the end, and the firewater in her flask tastes like plums and cream and kicks him right in the head on the second swallow, and the world dances around him, loopy and dizzying.

“That’s rough. I like it,” she declares, and he woozily watches her throw back another swallow from his flask.

“Keep it,” he mutters. “If you like.”

“I’d ask you to keep mine,” he hears her say, “but I’m too attached to my booze. Gods know when I’ll be able to buy another bottle.”

“What is it anyway?” he asks, and the world is still spinning around him, wild tilting arcs that make his eyes hurt.

“It’s a slivovitz,” he hears her say. 

“Pretty name, but I’m not sure it’s finished kicking me in the head yet.”

“It does that -– may I?”

“Yes, what?” And he blinks, because Noctis is leaning over the table to him and she’s –- kissing him full on the mouth. 

He’s left staring at her as she pulls away, covers her mouth again with her hand -- but he sees her jawline moving and why does that make him think of –- her licking her lips? 

Why does the thought make him go hot and cold all over and -– he gets to his feet and the words fall out of him before he can even think: “Where can I go to buy some? Spot you a bottle.”

He expects her to -– reject him gently, reject him sharply, laugh at him and reject him, laugh at him and make everyone else laugh at him –- 

He’s not expecting her to –- haul him up from the table and he can see the lace clinging to the muscles of her shoulders, of her arms, moving as she pulls on him –- as he gladly follows her -– someone in the mezzanine whistles encouragement and the moment they’re out on the street again Noctis is turning around, and looking at him, and she’s oddly gentle and shy for all her hand is still clasped tightly around his wrist.

So he grins, blinks away the slivovitz-haze, and mutters, “May I?”

“Yeah,” she says, and she laughs, and he pulls her into a kiss, and her hands are tangling into his hair, and he’s making fists in her lace, and pulling her frantically closer –-

\\\\\\\\\

part two: the song in her bones

“Is this okay?” 

She has to catch her breath -- she has to catch several breaths -– it’s not just because she’s been kissing someone beautiful –- he is beautiful, though, this Prompto, this man who had suddenly found her on the mezzanine floor of one of her favorite bars, this man who had just as suddenly found her in the unexpected noise of a bookshop in full author-signing mode –- she remembers his eyes peering at her through the history-book shelves and she remembers the half-wary smile of him, the strange lines cutting through the pretty haze of his freckles.

Now they’re here, and she can’t remember how they managed to make it up here –- the rooftop garden of this bookshop, that’s supposed to be closed for the winter but she’d been given the keys to this place a long time ago and now she’s all but kicking the door closed -– she groans as she breaks away from his arms, as she throws all the locks back into closed positions, and then -– Prompto.

Back to him: where he’s sinking onto a stone bench, wilted withered vines tangling in knots beneath his boots. Leaves, gray and brown and ashen, swept past on the cold grit of the city breeze -– and one of those large shapes catches in his collars and she checks the door one more time, before hurrying over to him. Before she’s reaching for the leaf to throw it back onto the softly shrieking wind and then -– her hands moving as of their own volition –- she’s winding her fingers into his hair, and she’s returning his question. The blond strands are startlingly soft to her touch. “Is this okay?”

“More than,” and he sounds so breathless, so sweet, that she leans in and touches her forehead to his and whispers, “You’re okay with me, too.”

“Really?” 

“Yeah.” She blinks, she grins back, wonders if she looks as dazed and artless as he does. “Kiss me again?”

“Noctis. Yeah,” and then she thinks she must be crowding into his lap, this time, since he’s got a lap available, since she wants to get in closer, closer, closer than the pattern on the gray henley he’s wearing beneath his tartan shirt. Closer than the leather gloves he’s still got on, battered shiny black that bares his fingertips –- the same fingertips he’s skimming light and swift up and down her throat and she whispers his name, tries to hitch him closer -– his mouth soon leaves hers and she should be embarrassed by the groan that escapes her mouth, but she can’t, she can’t, not when he’s nipping at her collar bones, not when he’s breathing soft startling warmth against her chilled skin.

She thinks she wants to touch his bare skin, she thinks she wants to map out the galaxies of him -– and it’s no surprise at all that he beats her to the punch somehow: his fingertips slipping past the trailing fringe of her heavy scarf, the layers of her own piled-on shirts, the lace of her tunic. His touch, in the small of her back, finding the divots either side of her backbone and she sighs, bows in against him. 

“I have no idea what you want,” he’s whispering against her cheek. Teeth, chattering only a little, and she kisses the tip of his nose.

So many things about him and she can’t help herself. Can’t stop herself: so she does slide her hands in past his shirt, over his shoulder blades, and she holds him close and she breathes in the smell of him, faint hints of black pepper and spice, mixed in with lemon. 

“Noctis,” she hears him say, again, and now she can really hear the song in his voice, the distant yearning song that he must carry around with him, because the way he says her name makes it sound like music in its own right. “Tell me, please.”

Question -- what was the question? 

What does she want?

Oh, the ideas crowding through her head -– she sees him blink and that’s when she feels the flush rising in her cheeks, all the way up past her own damn eyebrows, and she’d laugh if she weren’t shivering. Not with the cold -– with wanting him, with wanting to be with him, how ridiculous is that when they’ve only met each other a handful of times, a handful of encounters that always ends with one of them slipping away.

Usually her.

She thinks about -– him in her bed. Not so much a bed as a pile of quilts heaped onto one single threadbare mattress, but who’s counting?

Or would he want her back in his bed? She remembers the mismatched pillows, the bulk of the weighted blanket, the creak of the boxspring –- almost as vividly as she remembers the movement of the muscles in his arms and shoulders. Almost as vividly as she remembers the flutter in his stomach, and the stretch marks drawn into his hips.

His hands in her hair –- tug, now, interrupting her thoughts, and she blinks and kisses him and smiles. “Where was I?”

He’s laughing, softly. “Somewhere nice, maybe, the way you were –- making sounds.”

“Sounds,” she echoes. 

She kisses the shell of his ear, next. Whispers against the network of frail visible veins: “I was thinking about -– your mouth.” Nip at his earlobe that makes him shiver, hard, beneath her. “Whoever taught you how to kiss like that. Not kissing my mouth, either.” 

She wonders if he can hear the way her voice has gone rough with need. “I’d ask you to put your mouth on me here, if I thought you were up for it.”

And because she doesn’t do subtle -– she takes his hand and leads it to the buttons holding her skirt closed. 

Strangled gasp, followed by a groan. “You’re not half bad with your mouth yourself.”

“Not my actual job, but I’ll take it,” she laughs. “More like yours.”

“I’ve heard you sing,” and oh that breathy quality of him makes her skin prickle all over, hot and cold with need. “You’re not so bad.”

And she laughs some more. Pulls away just enough to look into his eyes. “Your place or mine?”

\\\\\\\\\

part three: stay, this hour

Pressed afterwards, he won’t be able to say what had actually woken him up: but in the moment he’s torn down the middle by two conflicting impulses, two entirely different sets of edges, attacking him, yanking him out of restless sleep. (Is there any other kind? He’s asked that question before, and he’s been asking that question again, and he’s still not getting the answers that he needs –- or the answers that will mean he won’t have to ask again for a while.)

Shrill high blare of ringtones -– the phone is the length of his arm away, the phone is still on the same nightstand where he’d put it down in the last second of being awake, and it feels like he’s moving through mud and the vicious undertow of an afternoon sea to reach for the blasted thing. He doesn’t even blink at the screen –- he just swipes instinctively, thumbing from left to right, and then he mumbles, “Yeah.”

“Do you think you might be able to come to a meeting later?”

“Depends on what you mean by later,” he mutters, and he makes the supreme effort to sound, at least, like he’s trying to listen. “I mean. I just woke up. You woke me up.”

“So what else is new?” And Monica doesn’t quite sigh, on the other end of the line, and through the roaring in his ears, the static still fogging his thoughts, he can hear the tramp of her booted feet, the refined chatter of her favorite pub, the clatter of a glass against a table.

For a very long, very brief moment, he considers reaching for the flask he still keeps on his person, and downing the contents. 

But he groans, instead, and says, “You want to meet why?”

“I want to speak to all of you.”

“Oh, shit,” he says, almost ready to wake up all the way.

Almost ready to ignore the scything cold of –- waking up alone in his bed.

Again.

He tries to push away the memory, the scent that’s still fastened into his skin, the scent that he can still recall all too clearly in his mind: musk and tea-roses and bruised grass.

The scent of Noctis, who’s left the shape of her body in his sheets, in the pillows. The scent of her, and the fine dark strands of her hair that he can see, clinging to his own arm, twined around his wrist.

He does shiver, now, and he hauls one of the blankets on over his nakedness, and he sighs and presses the thumb of his free hand to his temple. “Monica? What time are we meeting?”

“Can you be ready at six?”

“Yeah,” he mutters.

When he hangs up the clock display on his phone says it’s a little past noon, and -– he almost calls Monica back to ask her to push the meeting up another hour.

Only past noon, and he’s alone and he has no idea what happened last night and -– why does Noctis keep running away from him, he thinks, why does he keep waking up alone, tormented by the memory of her, the shape of her in his arms? 

He can still smell the spice-tinge of her sweat, taste the plum-flavor left on her mouth, feel the burning warmth of her skin and –- he slides reluctantly out of the bed that’s full of her and yet empty of her. Stumbles lightly over -– heap of black on the floor, so what else is new, half his wardrobe’s black nowadays –- 

Den, empty; kitchen, with last night’s pizza boxes and the empty bottle of plum wine. Why is there a pack of cigarettes next to the sink?

“Hey.”

He freezes, and can’t quite believe that one word.

He turns, slowly.

The throw that normally lives in a comfortable wadded-up bundle on his couch is more than enough to cover all of her, shoulders to knees in subtle stripes of blue and pink and purple, trailing fringe swaying as she breathes -– does she sound uncertain?

He feels uncertain, unprepared to face her here, like this, actually still in these spaces. “…I thought you had left.”

“I thought I was leaving,” is what he hears her say, in response. “I was –- going to put my clothes on and then I couldn’t.”

She’s in his arms, then, or at least she’s leaning against him, the side of her head and her hopelessly rumpled hair against his chest, and he wraps his arms around her, and he only knows he doesn’t want to spook her, send her running when she’s already here -– when she’s still here, whispering, and he bends his head to hers. Presses a kiss onto the top of her head. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Soft sharp-edged chuckle. “Usually people get angry when I stay.”

“I don’t know why you did, I’m still confused to tell you the truth, but -– can I be happy you’re here?”

Hitch of her breath that he feels in his own skin. “You’re not teasing me.”

“I’m as serious as I was last night,” and as he says it he feels his cheeks heat up because –- that must have been her belt, that he’d stumbled over -– the belt that he’d wound carefully and none-too-tightly around her forearms, lashing her softly in place beneath him.

She’s blushing, too, when she looks up at him. “That might be part of why I stayed.”

He blinks. “The sex?”

“No, that I could trust you enough to do that with me.” Cough, dart of her eyes, shiver as she presses close again. “That I trust you enough that I want to –- do it again. Or something else. As long as it’s with you. As long as we talk about it.”

“I’m pretty vanilla as these things go,” he says, knowing now that he’s repeating himself, as the memories continue to flutter awake in his mind. “But -– I’m still interested in some things. And in you.”

“I’ve heard that one before. So why am I still here?”

He doesn’t loosen his hold on her; he doesn’t tighten it either. “You tell me. I mean, when you can, or if you can. I’m saying, it’s still your decision, whatever happens now. And I’m not expecting anything from you, unless and until you tell me.” He shrugs, a little.

This time, when he tries to kiss the top of her head -– she looks up at him, and he holds still, startled, until she kisses him full on the lips. “I don’t know what to expect from you.”

“Funny. That’s what I think about you,” and he clamps his mouth shut over the rest of his questions. “I think –- I can try to follow your lead.”

“Brave of you,” she says, only a little mockery in the shadow of her smirk. “You totally thought I’d run off.”

“Can you blame me?”

“No.” Those are her arms, though, winding around his waist. “I’m willing to take it an hour at a time.”

“…Fair,” he says, and he does get to kiss her then, as she cranes up into his touch.

*

“Come with me,” he says, much later on. “I’ve got to see the others.”

“And what would they want with the likes of me?” But she pulls one of his shirts out of his closet and belts it loosely on over last night’s little blue dress. “You’re buying me dinner.”

“Gladly.”

\\\\\\\\\

part four: action reaction

He puts his empty water bottle down on the table, carefully, and he rakes his sweaty hair out of his eyes, and he’s riveted to the stage, to the two facing each other -- he has a feeling somewhere in his bones of watching fighters in some strange and invisible ring, in the sand of an arena, in an outline of a squared circle, and he knows the two of them and -- he doesn’t. 

For a moment, for this moment, he sees something in each of their faces that he can’t for the life of him recognize, and maybe that’s why he feels like something has dropped out of his stomach, a weight of thorns and boulders and nerves. Is it fear? Is it excitement? It feels like both and neither -- it’s complicated, Prompto thinks, and he barely remembers to breathe in, deeply.

Stage left, his usual position, his usual perch: for Ignis reminds Prompto of the long rangy silhouette of a diving predator-bird, an elegant flight-hunter in its elegant stoop. Slight hunch of those shoulders, concentrating on the notes he’s coaxing out of his guitar, sweet scream, a rough and stormy key -- the fingers of one hand moving up and down the fretboard in the shapes of chords, and the entire sweeping gesture of the other that strums and makes the guitar cry out. 

The light over his head comes on: he’s there, he’s really there, white shirt and the tumbledown of his hair because he apparently hasn’t bothered to style it, Prompto thinks. Light that glints in harsh relief on the silver frames of those ever-present spectacles. Light that seems to sink into the long dark ink lines trailing down from his ears, down his throat, to what Prompto knows is the shape of a huge cat, a huge hunter, that crouches on his back, ready to pounce on its prey.

And, stage right: head held far too high. Shoulders far too tense, and Prompto feels his own muscles knot up in sympathy -- and also in anticipation, because in the laughably short time that he’s known this girl, he’s already learned quite a bit about the pride that’s wired into every bone and joint of her. The bared-teeth thirst to fight that, to his eyes, thrums in her wild hair, in the lace cascading from her sleeves, in the very fact that he knows she points her feet on the pedals of her drum kit.

And her drum kit doesn’t look at all like the actual setup she’s stalking toward right now, closer to the center of the stage than where she’d started, but at least she’s carrying her own drumsticks: dark wooden implements that stand out all the more against her lace, against the fact that she’s wearing neon-blue accents in her hair, and a loop of neon-blue chain connecting the two matte-silver studs she’s wearing in her left ear -- one at the top and one at the bottom.

Beside him: creak of a chair, a half-amused half-wary smile. “I feel like I need to say something stupid,” he hears Gladio mutter, bass rumbling that sounds on edge. “ _Let’s get ready to rumble_ or some shit like that.”

“Whatever,” Prompto says --

And he’s drowned out immediately because Ignis is finally rolling his shoulders, is finally repositioning his hands on his guitar, is finally stepping toward his effects rig. “Well, then, you asked for this, so -- let’s just hope you can keep up.”

“Likewise,” and as her own overhead light flares into brightness, Prompto can’t really see much of Noctis except for her mouth, widening in a grin that has literally nothing to do with a smile -- 

Ignis’s hands, strumming, low rumbling threat, strings and chords quickly climbing the scales into a full-on electronic shriek, bare-handed attack and Prompto distantly hears Gladio next to him, muttering reverent obscenities --

That are suddenly drowned out by one single powerful note-strike from all of the components of the drum kit assembled around Noctis: a single cry of percussion, the almost-perfect harmony of too many vibrations mastered into one sound, and then the one sound multiplies, throbs and builds into an equally ominous beat that catches at Prompto’s pulse and speeds it along, makes him clap his hand over his mouth for fear of wrecking the moment with the temptation to shout, to start singing -- 

But this particular song doesn’t have any words for him to throw to the rafters. This is a song that’s a pure instrumental spell, power and rhythm -- and yes, there are discordant bits and pieces, there are measures that don’t quite hit the proper harmonious tension, but they’re keeping up with each other, Ignis on the lead guitars and Noctis on the drums -- he produces the wail and the cry of strings, she produces the thump and the beat of percussion, and Prompto doesn’t actually understand what they’re playing until they’re swooping downwards, until they’re literally dive-bombing into the measures (with Ignis playing at a near-crouch, almost on his knees on the stage; with Noctis in the full hunch that he’s seen her do before, in one or two songs that she’d lead, when she’d been part of Riotfeathers) -- and that’s where he hears himself breathe out on a stunned “Fuck me running.”

“She sounds fucking good is what I’m thinking, but -- I never expected otherwise,” and he drops back into awareness of himself, into awareness of the fact that both Ignis and Gladio know Noctis, from before all of this, before her piercings, before Prompto himself was even ever in the picture. 

He can’t reply. He’s caught on the power of the two of them, storm on the stage. On Ignis as he pulls himself back upright and performs one perfect windmill-movement, the entire length of his arm and his closed hand tracing out a wide circle, before he flies into the final measures of the track. On Noctis’s sweat flying from her bare shoulders as she lights into the drum kit with an ever-building ferocity, the sword-swipe of her as she attacks the cymbals on her left side.

Together, the guitars and the drums crash to a halt -- and Prompto knows the track ends on that jarring drop. Prompto knows how the hairs on his arms, on the back of his neck, always fly upright at that sudden ending in hush, in silence, like crashing into the sea, like falling out of the sky. 

He still feels the fearful knock of his heart against his chest, the necessary icy heave of air into his starved lungs -- and here, now, there’s tension, tight enough that he touches his throat and is almost surprised he can’t feel the cords, the rope, tying him up in knots where he’s looking from Ignis to Noctis and back again, with the shadow of a decision -- his, theirs, hers, _somebody’s_ \-- looming long and clawed over this place.

A decision that is made when Ignis sighs, and takes off not just his spectacles but his guitar, laying it reverently on the stand an arm’s-length away from his effects rig. “You always did like to -- play hard right from the beginning,” he’s saying, in the direction of the flash of light off a flask that Prompto recognizes. “Now you’ve got staying power. You need that.”

“You don’t want to know what I had to learn to get there,” and Prompto does get to his feet then, and he’s leaping up onto the stage before he can even really think about it -- he stops only when Noctis holds her hand out to him, palm out. “I’m good.”

“That? That was fucking good,” and that’s Gladio, the words graveled with laughter. “That sounded even better than the original -- don’t protest, Ignis, you know I’m right.”

“Wasn’t planning to protest,” is what Prompto hears in response -- but he’s suddenly distracted by the presence leaning into him. Tube top and lace and neon-blue and sweat, and the sweet razor-high of her smile, the satisfied shadow darkening her eyes. 

“You okay,” he asks, wrapping Noctis in his arms where she’s listing heavily into him. 

“I feel like I just drank an entire fucking barrel of slivovitz in one swallow,” is the slurred response. Brilliant grin and the permeating musk of her cologne, heavy in his lungs. 

“You still drink that shit?” Gladio asks, from a few feet away, where he’s standing over Ignis, who’s now sitting at the table that Prompto had occupied. 

“And you still have no taste,” she says.

Prompto leads her over to the table when she nods in its direction.

He also sits up straight so she can rest against him, all but sprawled out on his lap. “Well?”

“Stage trial next. And Monica will be there. She’s the real judge. You know this.” The words fall from Ignis’s mouth in that slow deliberate rhythm that he’s regained, now that he’s breathing freely again.

“I’m ready, I hope you are, I hope she is,” he hears Noctis say. “Your drum kit’s shit though. What the fuck did Luche do to it, or do I even want to know?”

“You don’t,” Prompto mutters, and then he kisses her right on her temple. “Just, trust, you don’t. And it’s me saying that.”

“So yeah,” he hears her say. 

And then she pulls away a little -- claims his hand as if in recompense -- and she sits up straight and says, “If you’ll have me, if Monica says I can -- I want in.”

“The decision is hers,” and Ignis is nodding, is reaching out with one hand to shake, solemn and quiet. “Until then, until she says otherwise, welcome to Crackshot. Noct.”

“Iggy, Gladio,” he hears her say.

And she turns back to him and grins, that outlaw smile he’d woken up next to that very morning. “Let’s do this.”

He taps his finger against the tip of her nose, and laughs a little, and says, “Let’s do this.”

\\\\\\\\\

part five: some of them want to get used

Shiver and shake of the music in his nerves, one single verse and one single chorus and far too many whispered innuendos and ad-libs in the extended bridges, and -- more than the shocked silence that had dissolved into rapturous clapping and fists raised to the beat -- he remembers the flashing brilliant bright lights that had swept up and down the bare stage and the one single person who’d stood up from behind the drums.

One single person, of course, in the shape of Noctis: the tattered shredded hems on the button-down -- thing -- that she had been wearing, far too long to be a proper shirt and far too short to be a dress. The fine black stripes on pale-gray material, sleeves rolled up to expose the support tape she’s wearing up and down her forearms -- and then the shocking contrast of neon-blue shorts, flashes of white lace riding her ribs. 

He can still remember the way she’d held one half-gloved hand up before her eyes, as if she’d been blinded by the stage lights. The arch of her neck, the proud jut of her chin, even when she’d started out with saying, “I wouldn’t record this if I were you: I think I blew out my voice last week. No thanks to,” and then she’d tossed her head, as if to indicate himself waiting stage right with a concentrated ginger-honey lozenge coating his tongue in tingling warmth, and Ignis and Gladio sharing a vacuum-flask of tea.

She had laughed, had Noctis, when the audience had good-naturedly booed her -- he still thinks he actually did see her flash a middle finger, the same way she’d responded to cheering from Riotfeathers’s fans -- and then she’d gestured to one of the roadies.

He can still hear, right now, as he opens the door into his own apartment, the absolute hush that had fallen over the club when Noctis had pulled on a headset mic. The graveled raspy melody of her voice as she’d sung, full-throated, entirely a capella: _Sweet dreams are made of these, who am I to disagree?_

Furious flash of her drumsticks in the instant after, as she’d launched into that infamous beat -- and even without any other accompaniment, even without the synthesizers or the backup voices, she’d been a one-woman show.

Even with the missed notes. Even with the soft coughing of her, in between the words. He thinks he might ask her, again, as kindly and as insistently as he could, to try and give up smoking -- not that it’ll stick, and he stands a better than decent chance of getting smacked in the process.

But -- her voice, her beautiful instrument, the sound of her that he’s hearing in the back of his head as he wades through into his bedroom and -- she’s there, sitting on the end of the bed, and even with only one lamp lit in all these spaces he can see the small, satisfied smile of her.

The insolent line of her, as she sits up and turns partway to address him, and says, “Did I surprise you?”

“You know damn well you did,” he says, and he doesn’t need to be told to sink to his knees before her. Hands up, well in the air, well clear of her: only breaths to share in the spaces between, as he leans up partway to get a good look in her eyes.

Noctis. Hectic sweet smolder in the depths of her, in the curl of her tongue as she licks her lips and presses her cheek to his -- he holds his breath, he thinks she’s listening to the thunder of his pulse in his temples, he’s on the edge and shivering suddenly, not just from her proximity.

He clenches his hands into fists -- vaguely, distantly, he hears the leather on his gloves creaking in protest -- 

She’s whispering to him: “I don’t know if I can always do that.”

“We never asked you to,” he says, though he has to swallow several times, he has to work out the burrs climbing up his throat. “Not even when -- Gladio and I were laughing.”

“I know. I still blame you for putting it all in my head.”

The breath leaves his lungs in a gasped laugh. “After what you did, I’ll say I’m happy to take the blame.”

“Yeah you would,” he hears Noctis say, and then -- he’s trying to turn his head but she’s way ahead of him, he thinks, the last coherent thought before her hands are coming up to cup his cheeks, her fingertips catching in his gelled hair as she pulls him close. Into the sweet ferocious hunger of her kiss, the needy hum of her breath against his mouth that leaves him sparking all over.

She kisses him like she’s threading electricity down all his nerves, electricity that rivets him where he’s kneeling even though there’s another instinct rising in him, wanting to push her down onto her back -- kiss after kiss, battering at his senses, and she’s such a shock, always, such a welcome shock to his senses -- 

Movement of her that makes his eyes fly open. He doesn’t even remember when he had closed them: but he’s glad he’s looking at her now because of her kiss-sheened mouth, because of the dark spots rising in her cheeks -- she’s radiating heat at him and he finally touches her, breathless and swaying towards him and he gathers her close.

He hears her say his name in that same musical rasp: “Prompto.”

“What do you want?” he asks.

The answer he gets is -- a tug on his shirts. Her hand trembling at his collar. The twist of her mouth into a needing smirk -- he leans down and laughs, licks at her lips, and with a supreme effort he wrenches away, and gets undressed as fast as he can.

She’s still finished before he is, which is fair, considering the glimpse he’d caught of her cast-off boots when he’d entered the room, and their complicated laces up the front, and the zippers down the back. 

But that means he turns to her as she rolls onto her hands and knees and makes her way up to the head of his bed: his appreciative hum turns into a laugh as she wiggles her ass at him.

And he hurries to draw level with her, and run his own hand through her sweat-damp hair. “The usual rules,” he whispers. “Or you can just tell me what you want.”

“You’re repeating yourself,” he hears her say -- and she rises from the pillows and crashes into him, kisses him to steal his breath away, and he’s more than happy to go along for the ride -- 

It’s a wrench to pull away from her mouth but the moan that shudders out of her when he sucks a bruise into the angle of her jaw is more than worth it: and she hisses encouragement at him, so he rolls with it, doesn’t hold back, and he scrapes at her skin with teeth and tongue, again and again, until she’s slurring together her words, until she’s cursing him and arching mindlessly and -- 

“Fuck, Noct,” he mutters, as he trails his hand down, past her navel and lower, lower still -- the moan that echoes in the spaces between them when he pushes her thighs apart is partly hers and partly his and he yanks her leg over his shoulder, hand firm around her ankle so she can’t curl in on herself -- he growls, quietly, “No, stay right where you are. That’s what I want.”

“Tickles,” is her answer, in much the same undone tone, unraveling around the edges. It’s -- a lot like the voice she’d been singing in.

When did the room get so fucking hot, he wonders, absently, as he traces the knuckles of his free hand over her mound and down, lower, the smell and the wet of her catching on his skin and -- she’s cursing him out again, calling him all kinds of names, and he grins and spreads her legs wider and then it’s easy, easy, to fold himself down and kiss her there, open-mouthed -- and she sucks in her breath and goes completely silent above him.

She’s shaking so hard he can feel it as he licks in again, deeper and deeper with every stroke: and even her voice shakes when she says his name.

He’s too damn preoccupied to answer -- he’s too damn intent on her, and he sticks his fingers in his own mouth, gets them as wet as he can as fast as he can, and the next time he drives his tongue into her, he curls a finger in too, and she screams.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, Prom,” he thinks he hears her say, and he adds another finger, scissors them and gods, how is it she’s getting even wetter -- 

The taste of her, the smell of her, the sounds of her, he’s surrounded by her completely -- it’s different from when he was surrounded by her voice and the shattering steady beat of her drums, and he’s as hard now as he had been at the venue, hissing encouragement at her from the wings and cursing as she leaned into the drums with every muscle, every gorgeous limb.

He makes himself catch a breath -- but the instant of looking up all along the length of her body, all the way up to the tortured ecstasy on her face, is nearly enough to finish him off, completely untouched.

As it is, he has to bite savagely at the inside of his cheek -- and then she nearly undoes him again, because she’s shifting her weight onto her one foot and she’s actively riding his hand now, riding the fingers he’s still got in her, and -- there’s nothing for it, he badly wants her to get off on the instant and so he finds her clit and strokes the tip of his tongue against it -- once, twice, he thinks he hears her scream again and then -- rough sobbing breaths as she comes -- 

“Noct,” he whispers, breathless and winded as she stills slowly. “Please?” 

He doesn’t even know what she’s asking for, but she just growls his name. Says, “Come on I want it in me, I want you in me,” and he scrambles to obey.

Shouts her name as he sinks into her, as he starts to thrust, and he’s hyper-focused on her hands on his arms, bruising strength. On the avid spark in her eyes as she rolls her hips to meet him -- “Fuck, fuck, Noct come on come on,” he moans.

“I got you,” he thinks he hears her say, and -- then his own climax slams into him at last, and the last thing he sees is the twist of Noctis’s mouth, that triumphant needy smile -- 

It takes him a moment to come back to himself -- he licks at her collar bone by way of apology and rolls away, and lets her yank at him, coming to rest in her arms once again. 

“You gonna be hot for me like that when I sing?” she says, and he can hear the smug teasing in her voice.

“Maybe you’re right,” he mumbles, “you can’t do that every time I ask or we ask because you’ll kill me. Gods you don’t even know what you do to me.”

“I think I can guess some.” Laughter in her words, sharp, but the kiss she pulls him into is wet and hot and welcoming. 

“Duet,” he mutters, without even really thinking about it. “Only in private. Someplace no one has to catch us.”

“I like the way you think, sir,” he thinks she says, and then she’s rolling him over onto his back, and he laughs, and lets her in.


	5. "regrets"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nyx muses on Cor, brilliant piano music, and what he does and doesn't regret.

Perks of the job, Nyx thinks, as he paces down the stretch of corridor that’s his to guard for the night, for the -- was it the fifth or the sixth or the tenth time in that hour already? Staying awake is sometimes difficult precisely because of those perks: in here, there’s enough climate control that he actually can forget how bitterly cold it is on the streets. Cold enough for a forecast of snow, or something -- he can’t be arsed to remember, really, unless it’s sleet or sheets of ice on the streets and then he’d have to pay attention in the morning, getting home on his bike. 

In here, there are lamps lit and he doesn’t have to borrow a spark of flame to light his way around one corner, or to peer past a secured door, or to make his way back to the guard post. In here, he can actually choke down the coffee, which he does, as he refills his battered paper cup and pours in a little too much sugar because it wouldn’t be drinkable otherwise. In here, sometimes, there are faces he can recognize: the Kingsglaive has shrunk, yes, in the aftermath of that damned aborted assassination attempt, and he knows this because he personally murdered some of the traitorous fuckers who’d been in on that.

But the Kingsglaive has also grown, unexpectedly, and for some reason these new recruits actually want to take their job to protect their king, to protect their (in many cases borrowed) country, seriously: and so Nyx just blinks at the pair who pass by on patrol in the opposite direction. Contrasting appearances of the girls, and the uniform jacket fits on both of them, and he wings a salute in their direction that they can’t possibly see.

What he regrets is probably this: he’s been to the Citadel before, obviously; he’s pulled guard duty before, up and down the various levels, obviously. But there’s a, a tightness somewhere in his gut that feels like hooks and cabled wire and an ever-winding-tight nervousness, and it’s not even keyed or knotted to anyone or anything on this particular level, this warren of living quarters for higher-ranked functionaries and lesser nobles who’ve made themselves useful in running the affairs of the kingdom.

He has to try and ignore it: even though he knows he’ll have to pass the most likely source of it, the most likely place that’s calling to him, taunting him. The voices of the Kings and Queens of Lucis, still taunting him, after that brief and thoroughly misguided moment of holding the Ring of the Lucii in his hand, poised to ram it onto his own left ring finger -- and he regrets that he listened to their warnings, regrets that he _didn’t_ \-- he’s convinced he didn’t listen and that’s why he almost died on that last night of the purge, nearly dying himself among the traitors that he’d already killed.

And as a last resort Nyx reaches for the flask he carries around in the back pocket of his uniform trousers, wood-burn and grass-blade scent that clashes horribly with his terrible coffee, and he throws back a hasty swallow at the precise moment his shift ends: deep-voiced clang, clang, of the bell at the guard post, warning him that he’s done for the night. Done for the week. 

He doesn’t sag into a chair and reach for the closures of his coat with shaking hands, he doesn’t, as he hears those hissing warning voices again -- 

Chime, quiet but piercing, from his other pocket, and he extracts his phone and squints uncertainly at the message -- well, it’s not really a message so much as it is an address, and one located in this Citadel, if it’s halfway up the opposite tower from where he’s currently sitting.

Does he have to? Nobody’s commanding him now, or for the next three days; his time is his own, and he doesn’t even have to keep wearing his jacket if he doesn’t want it or need it -- although it’s so cold that he wishes he had the cowl, as he finishes off his shit coffee and gets reluctantly to his feet, and for a very long moment indeed he thinks he’d like to risk warping to the room he’s been invited to, except for the idea that the voices hissing in the back of his head might decide to -- roar at him, reach out for him, claim him, because he’s here and so are they, below him, entombed and waiting in crystal -- 

No. Perish the fucking thought.

So it takes him the better part of an hour to cross through the Citadel, and he curses every weary step of the way, he hisses back at the voices and when he finally gets to the right door, that he thinks he’s never even seen before, so what else is new -- he almost trips over the threshold and -- the music falters but only for a breath, and then picks back up again.

The music?

When he gets there, the solemn measures are fading out -- and why does the music make him think of snow, again? Snow falling on a river’s shore, snow swirling into the cold slowness of the current, and the moon burning out all the light of the stars as it soars over his head. Snow and the perfect quiet of the night, the perfect stillness of it, the perfectly captured prism-image of the moment.

The piano is a huge gleaming thing, he thinks, but it’s not really alive, is it? True that it’s gorgeous, with the sparing touches of gold here and there, and the startling brilliant red cloth, narrow plush length of it piled precariously on the tilted lid. True that it’s polished and it’s producing a different kind of music now, as if the player had moved on to some other part of the piece he’d been playing, and Nyx feels his heart race as the music begins to pick up in tempo, something that now makes him think of a cheerful waltz -- he can’t help but step to that beat.

The movement is brief, though, as he finds himself getting right to the piano -- and the man playing the piano -- just as that part ends, and -- there’s a flash of something determined in Cor’s face, catching on the lines and the planes of him, a tic in his jaw and the sudden steel-like tension tightening in his shoulders and Nyx very nearly opens his mouth to ask -- 

Quiet long exhale.

Nyx catches himself just in time: he’s seen that movement of Cor’s chest before. Heard him make that sound before, in the blood-scented moment between stillness and -- drawing his sword from his part of the King’s Armiger, drawing the sword itself from the austere elegance of its sheath -- and charging forward into the heart of the battle, reckless and heedless and knowing --

So he’s right there, front row center and the only member of the audience, really, as Cor launches into a storm -- so what else is new, except that he’s not carrying anything in his hands at all, and the only thing he’s wielding is music -- a precise whirlwind, a precise torrent. Fingers on the keys and the shift of his entire body as he works up and down the length of the keyboard, as he bears down into the full strike of all of his fingers calling the notes out of the piano. The shift of his head, not to look where he’s going, Nyx thinks -- the shift of his head because he’s still and constantly actively listening to what he’s doing, still and constantly thinking on the piece because -- there’s no sheet music anywhere around them at all. Not even a virtual copy flashed up on the screen of a tablet or a smartphone -- Nyx has seen Crowe do something like that, on the nights when she deigns to play percussion, tucked away in a corner of the bar that Libertus frequents -- no such thing here. Cor is playing the piece from memory.

Up the entire array of keys and then down again, just to repeat the process -- not to repeat the music itself because the tempo shifts so quickly, so brilliantly -- sure Nyx hears one or two wrong notes, sure he catches the minute frown that appears in Cor’s face every time, fleeting self-chastisement -- but the entire thing sounds like nothing more or less than extraordinary to him. 

He just doesn’t really understand any of it -- any more than he does the stories about Cor, the legends about him, although he has learned to think that the stories are -- probably true. Probably mostly true, especially the ones that Cor has actually told him. Surviving anything, everything, and burdened with regrets all the way through.

And he thinks this because he knows, Nyx knows, what it’s like to have walked out of childhood games and teenage pranks straight into the horror and the chaos of war. Knows what it’s like to volunteer for war, even, to sign up burning with some kind of determination. Knows what it’s like to have that determination burned out and turned into ashes and apathy -- in his case, with seething ugly hissing voices and the twist of hatred in the faces of the men and the women he’d killed. Purged.

Cor is an instrument of killing and purging and of protection. And he’s damned extraordinary at that job, too: that the King of Lucis still sits on his throne is just the beginning of the proof. 

Nyx just carries around with him -- the lives of his countrymen, the lives of his soldiers, the lives of the Kingsglaive and, in a strange way, their pride, their drive to keep on fighting.

And now this same Cor, with his regrets and his long days and nights and his burdens, is fighting to get all the way through the music and he’s running through even faster measures now, maybe he’s winding up towards the finish -- and even as Nyx is thinking it the notes all crash together, and come to a bright shuddering stop.

Cor, breathing heavily, in the aftermath.

Nyx can believe it -- believe that he’s winded -- he’d only been playing the music with his entire fucking body, after all.

And it was damn brilliant music no matter the slip-ups, no matter the missed notes, and he smiles and, easily, drops to sit right on the floor, right next to the bench, bracing his elbows on the wood next to Cor’s hip. 

“Nyx,” and that voice, too, sounds drawn out, weary, but Cor is smiling. Just a little, just the bare uptick of his mouth. Light in his eyes, too, still high on the whole thing, is Nyx’s guess. “I can do that again if you prefer. You missed part of it.”

“I think I’ve heard enough,” he says, careful to be warm, careful to tell the truth. “I just -- one stupid question. That I think I know half the answer to, but I have to ask. How? I mean, when did you get the time to do any of this? Learn any of this?”

He’s really not expecting the quiet chuckle -- he leans into it, needing it, yearning for more of it -- neither is he expecting Cor to get up from the bench and push it away, so he can sit down too -- right on the floor next to Nyx and crowding in next to him, the two of them almost hiding in the shadow of the piano, in the lingering echoes of the music that still seems to be drifting around them, warming, like a gentler breeze.

“I hate it when I have nothing to do,” Cor mutters, presently. “I can’t always sleep. I can’t do anything in the small hours.”

“So you decided you’d become a fantastic piano player. No teachers, no nothing,” and Nyx laughs, always softly, always admiringly, in these moments, in these stolen confidences. “Just you and the dark and the piano.”

“Kept me from losing my mind. Kept me from having nightmares.”

He puts his arms around Cor, hauls him close, as he’s been tempted to do all along, and he’d only restrained himself because he wanted to hear the music, too. “Did anyone ever listen to you though?”

Soft chuckle, in response, but this one does sound like drawing a sword. “Not Regis. The -- ones around him, Aulea, Noctis.” 

“Your people,” Nyx murmurs, soothing. “I get it. I get that, I think.”

“Do you?”

“Of course not like you do,” and he presses a kiss to the nearest part of Cor he can reach: in this moment, the breadth of his forehead, just above his furrowed eyebrows. “But like I understand that there was a story in the music, that the person who wrote it wanted to say. I know those things -- are. They’re there. Just like -- Aulea and Noctis were there to listen to you. To pay attention to what you were trying to do for them.”

He glances at the twitch in Cor’s mouth and knows he’s heading in the right direction, so he continues. “What you actually wanted to say, though, what you were trying to tell me just now -- I got nothing. Don’t even know why you wanted me here. Just grateful I was.”

He gets a kiss for that, and he melts into it, gladly. Leans into the fingers winding into his hair, and in return he grips Cor’s arms as hard as he can, like he’s trying to leave bruises on him, like he’s trying to leave marks on him.

The same hand that’s in his hair wraps gently around the back of his head in the instant before they even brush against the leg of the piano.

With all that -- how can he stop himself from falling even deeper into Cor?

And he breaks the kiss, reluctantly. Glimpse of annoyance winging swiftly across Cor’s face. 

“What.”

“Your place or mine?”

Cor is up on his feet and hauling him upwards somehow -- and Nyx returns the favor, shoring him up with a shoulder against his arm, a hand at his hip.

Silence in his head, only the blessed echoes of the piano, and he falls into the kisses that Cor’s scattering over his face as they go, and this, this is a thing without regrets, that he can’t regret, whatever this might be.


	6. turn away from the light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by lovely [art by Izuumii](https://izuumii.tumblr.com/post/181721963291/prom-loves-the-view-out-of-nocts-apartment), though in this actual one-shot Noct has long hair (falls past his shoulders), and is at least four years older than Prom. :D Living that age-gap life, yes that's me.

Blinking, startled, thoughts scattering in the wake of suddenly coming back to the whirl and the whisper of his thoughts: and when had he fallen asleep? When had he come back awake? He’s looking at the odd rich light that’s sinking gently, prettily, into his skin and into his freckles. Wind, fluttering, gentle around his bare shoulders and his feet sticking out of a fold of the blankets. 

Long low blast of air-horns from below, far away enough the sound doesn’t have the power to make him jump -- it just throbs along his nerves and then fades away into vibrations, not even echoes, strangely warming, even when he can’t tell when the whole thing goes to silence. 

What time is it? And what’s with all the lights, the neon bars falling into the room in an assortment of angles, all dictated by the skyscrapers all around him? Neon bars shifting, some of them quickly and some of them slowly, in brilliant colors. Pink and blue and green, now, even as he watches, and -- listens. The night in and of itself in its settling silence, in the deep quiet of the late hour -- he blinks at the clock on the bedside table and its projected numbers. Minutes ticking past eleven in the evening -- oh gods, he never even made it out the door, did he? He never even let those guys know he wasn’t coming: some kind of house party that some people in a class he was auditing were throwing, and he got the last-minute invitation, and -- he does remember hedging his bets, not at all committing to anything.

The bed’s condition, as he strains to discover the culprit of his waking, tells him what he actually did wind up getting into. What might have possibly sent him into sleep, entirely unaware, in an entirely good kind of exhausted way.

Books in a pile next to his hip, fortunately all paperbacks or he might have woken up to a weird bruise -- and the possible horror of having to explain it to literally anyone else. But maybe the story would be worth it, because the four titles make up a just-completed series -- each book titled for a type of wind, and those winds somehow named for -- gods? A war of gods and humans and many other beings besides? 

He checks the topmost cover in the faltering light, and laughs a little, because -- yes, he’s not going to bother hiding it, not when he’s this ravenous. He’s been reading Gladio’s latest books, he’s got this as a signed set, and he’s already burned through the first three books and there’s a bit of ribbon-bookmark trailing out of the fourth one, one-fourth of the pages already opened and read. 

And the fourth one is the one that’s different, because it’s the one that also has Ignis’s name on the front. Co-written, cooperative, and the language had shown it -- and so had the uptick in the tightness of the combat scenes. 

He’ll have to write one more long rambling review of an email, this time addressed to the two of them: _\-- not that you didn’t already blow my mind with the war thing, not that you didn’t already know how to let me taste that there’s a war on, but -- I started this book already smelling the ash and the blood and the dirt and I’m not sure you’re gonna let up until the last page --_

Maybe the books are to blame, because he thinks he had dreamed of a city -- a city full of districts like this one, vertical neighborhoods soaring into the sky in steel and glass, but so quiet, like it had been smothered under glass, frozen in time beneath a strange blue haze in the sky that didn’t even let any kind of wind through, just a turn around the block from the main setting of the books, eerily quiet even with the rumbling of the distant feuding gods, and -- he has to, he can’t help himself, he turns his head and the clouds are scattering on a wind that he can only barely feel in his toes, in his fingertips, in the riffle of soft coolness against the blankets, against the crumpled sheets weighed down in random spots by things like -- a smartphone, a jacket, a beanie, his glasses -- which he scrambles for and puts on and -- 

That’s how he finally, clearly, sees the sliver of light escaping the bathroom door -- and seeing it, seeing that reality of the closed door, allows him to hear the sounds of the shower in use. Specifically, the white noise of the water falling on tiles -- and then its absence.

And: he has to remember how secure this place is. How many layers of security there actually are, folded into each of the floors, in light of the people who live up and down in these prettily cramped suites. He has to remember the hoops he’d jumped through just to get the clearance for a _borrowed_ key-card. 

So there’s no damn chance in hell that there’s a stranger in that shower.

Right?

He still startles, a little, when the door into the bathroom opens, a light clicks off, and the scent of woodsmoke and musk sneaks into the bedroom that he’s still and currently stuck in.

The exact same scent, in fact, that he’s been wrapped in all along, which makes sense because this isn’t his house, this isn’t his room, this isn’t his bed -- this place belongs to the man who’s crossing over to him, silently.

Not a stitch of clothing on Noctis, with the probable exception of the towel wrapped around his hips, the thick and worn material slung low enough that Prompto’s already swallowing past a suddenly dry throat, as he watches rivulets of water trail glittering down taut skin over elegantly sculpted muscle, past waist and navel and -- 

The bed heaves and shifts as Noctis clambers in and -- crams in next to him. Wiry arms corded with goosebumps, and more water trickling onto Prompto’s own shoulders. Long wet dark strands of hair gone limp and smooth and cool, and the unexpected creeping cold of the water should have been uncomfortable -- there are days when it sometimes still is -- but tonight, still a little unsettled from sleeping and waking and dreaming, and the strange silence of the world that had haunted him in those dreams, he leans in further, looking for any kind of comfort he can find.

“What’s wrong?”

That, Prompto thinks, that’s what he’s looking for, that’s comfort right there. That graveled sweet voice, low and gentle, and he’s the only one who hears it like this, raspy, half-gone from long hours of use. 

“What did you do today,” he half-asks, instead of answering. “I want to hear.”

“Wasn’t anything exciting at all,” he hears Noctis say -- or sigh. Weight of him bearing Prompto down to the bed -- he scrambles to put everything away so they can stretch out, luxuriously, the two of them in the center of the covers and the pillows and the blankets. “I didn’t even get to see the people I was supposed to be meeting. Tell me again, who thought teleconferencing was a good idea?”

“People who work together,” he says, “just not in the same places. Not in the same countries.”

“Works for them, but -- you do know everyone else I work with is -- ” Gesture, Noctis’s hand waving, negligent and graceful all at once. “We’re all over the place, but we’re all in one place, you know? Of course you do, you know that. And they insisted on doing the thing. So -- I don’t understand them at all. Had to do a lot of talking, trying to keep the meeting under control.”

“Sorry,” Prompto thinks, and he curses the traitorous ignorant blush that heats his cheeks. He’s -- not entirely clueless when it comes to running a family business, or the myriad interlinked branches thereof, and part of that is directly because of Noctis, but -- the entire thing is out of his ken and he wants to keep it that way. If he’s lucky he’ll never have to concern himself with things like -- managing people; he’ll be an employee if he has to be, but him? A leader? A manager? Perish the thought.

Snort of laughter from very close by, and not one that’s unkind at all: “I know, I do this shit to myself,” and that’s still Noctis, tired and impossibly sweet and clingy anyway. “Wish I could get away.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to, if getting away means -- you’d be cutting off an arm or a leg,” Prompto offers, softly, because they’ve had that very discussion before, and mostly sober besides, wreathed in the lazy-rising smoke of a really nice joint that they’d passed back and forth, all the way down to the last bit of burning embers.

“I know you wouldn’t, but sometimes I wish I could do it.” 

Tension, tension, he can feel it singing high and taut and tight in the arm that’s still wrapped around his shoulders, and he -- he can’t help himself, he has to do something about _Noctis_ , at least.

So he looks over his shoulder, raises an eyebrow when Noctis spots him -- he’s asking for permission, and when he gets it -- he sprawls himself out on that broad chest. Never mind the lingering dampness, or indeed the stray drop of suds that he spots in the hollow of Noctis’s collar bones -- he breathes, settles, pins Noctis down and wraps his arms around him, just above his waist. 

“Thanks,” he hears, after he surfaces from the temptation of pressing kisses to Noctis’s skin, after he’s gotten nearly all the way up to Noctis’s throat, after he’s breathed him in. 

And Noctis is kissing him, gently, pulling him up just a little so they’re on a level, so they can kiss without having to strain, and it’s sweet and it’s shivery and he quickly loses track of the little moans they exchange, the little dips and shifts of weight, the little weight of Noctis’s hand at the back of his head. The way his hands wander in aimless lines up and down Noctis’s flanks.

“Wasn’t expecting you to still be here,” Noctis says, in one of the slow moments, the two of them catching their breath. “I know you said something about going to a party.”

“I said I’d been invited, I didn’t even think about whether I wanted to go or not,” he says. “And then I started reading _Blade-Edged Wind_ and I couldn’t think about anything else.”

“No spoilers,” Noctis warns, laughingly.

“Why would I ever do that to you?” He pretends to be insulted, he pretends that he’s going to roll away, maybe pointedly pick up the fourth book and read it right in Noctis’s face, except that Noctis’s hand has wandered down to his ass. Palm and five fingers splayed out flat, sort of exploring and sort of possessive too, especially when -- is that Noctis’s thumb, nearly neatly dipping towards his entrance?

“You threaten to,” Noctis is saying, grinning now, flash of teeth in the neon-stained night, flash of sharp amusement and -- something darker -- in his eyes. “I’ve lost count.”

Maybe he’s leaning into that hand on his ass, maybe he’s trying to maneuver his own hand between them so he can pinch that soft ticklish spot on Noctis’s belly -- he laughs when he succeeds, when Noctis lets out a sound that’s pretty hard to describe -- he almost sounds angry, except that angry things don’t squeak, he doesn’t think -- 

“Quarter,” Noctis says, then, “please don’t do that again.”

He opens his mouth to play along, maybe demand something ridiculous -- he lets out a surprised sigh instead, one that turns into acceptance, because Noctis is kissing him again and this time he feels like a marauder, an outlaw -- and this kiss never even started lightly, it’s teeth and tongue and demand all at once, and Prompto gasps in a breath and pushes closer, closer, no questions asked, leaning helplessly into the kiss.

He’s almost expecting what happens next: he’s not afraid, anyway, when he’s moved. When he lands on his back. 

Noctis’s hair falls around him, barely reaches him, the ends gone a little wavy now that they’ve been scrunched dry in the pillows and the bedding. Falls and blocks out the world, everything outside this bed. 

“What do you want,” he whispers, marveling that he can find the words, when Noctis pulls away -- not too far, they’re still practically nose to nose, but he can hear and feel the heave of air moving, into and out of Noctis’s chest. Into and out of his own. “What do you want, Noct?”

“You.” 

“’M right here,” he says, grinning, dazed, needing. 

“Yeah -- so stay right where you are and -- Prom?” Noctis is falling upon him again. Not just kisses, these -- lingering intent suction, painting a line of powerful sensation down, and Prompto keens for the thought of wearing those spots in the morning, showing them off when they turn into hickeys, where everyone can see what he’d been doing, or what had been done to him.

He’s so lost in the sensation of Noctis’s kisses, Noctis’s marks, that he nearly forgets to respond to the question -- he’s dazed, he’s overheated all of a sudden, and when Noctis mutters against his skin once again, nips at him to get his attention, it’s all he can do to say, “What?”

“Love you.”

“Gods I love you,” he mutters, world and wind and light and words falling away from him -- all he knows, all he wants, is here, spanned between his shaking arms.


	7. rise against

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rule 63!Noctis in a canon-ish AU, and I can't really explain this without telling you what the playlist was:  
> [What's Up Danger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y88LVU7MAe4)  
> [Rise Up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNKu1uNBVkU)  
> [Face My Fears](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On5-NaOqeRQ)
> 
> Sort of -- "gonna fly now", Princess Noctis-style :D

_Maybe I haven’t done enough to tell you, Noct,_ and the voice in her head murmurs, clear faraway melody, with the edges of lightning and thunder woven into the words, and the fury of ten thousand islands under a shroud of darkness and evil and tainted blood, but still fighting back -- still struggling to stay alive. Click of beads, clatter of hands moving over a staff -- it isn’t even made of metal or anything like that -- it’s heavier than the weight of unshed tears, it’s heavier than the weight of grief and pain and the torn-out half of her heart.

Heart that feels even heavier, up here, underneath the shrouded sky -- there are no stars, there is no moon, and all she can see above the ragged snag-toothed horizon of skyscrapers and defensive turrets and the slender amplifier beacons is the blank blue shield. The blank blue Wall, that won’t even acknowledge how broken she is now.

All her ancestors and all her antecedents, all the Kings and Queens of Yore -- they’re the Wall, they’re her judges, and they are none of them the mother she’s lost and how she hates every single one of them now. Every single one of them, and on, and upwards, wherever it is that the Astrals live -- just one of them, really, just the one of them that’s been glaring judgment at her all her life, from behind the eye-slits of a blank pointless mask -- 

She spits into the wind, and thinks unkindly, as loudly as she can, in the direction of the shrine above her -- the shrine at the very top of the Citadel, dedicated to cursed and ugly and heartless Bahamut -- that asshole -- every evil thought that’s crossed her mind in the long long long moments ticking by, excruciatingly slow, after the death of her mother and the loss of the hoarse melody of her voice. 

_Maybe I haven’t done enough to tell you, and for that, you’ll have to forgive me, now that time’s running out --_

The tears are a harsh weight of thorns in her throat, in her head, around her heart, and -- no way to tear them away no matter how much she wants to. No matter how she denies the howling absence of her mother -- the strength of her heart that far outweighed the massive strength of her arms, her body, her amazing mind. No matter how she denies the memory of wild Galahdian roses crumbling into flashfire and fine white ash. No matter how she denies the shattered weight of her mother’s last possessions, every single one broken into pieces by an immense instant of heat: the staff, the beads in her hair, the tattered lace around her throat.

_What I was trying to tell you, it’s about that thing that you have. I know you hate it. I know you want to tear it out of you -- but don’t, Noct, that’s what I’m asking you. What you have: it’s a gift, it’s a weapon, it’s a blessing. It’s not a curse, or it doesn’t have to be, you don’t have to walk through this world and pretend that you’re not falling apart under the weight of it._

She falls to her knees in the ruin of this garden, this last possible stronghold of her mother’s memory. The only place outside of Galahd where its wild roses had grown, bravely, brightly -- and even now the trellises and the roots are crumbling away, falling away, under the withering presence and disapproval of Bahamut -- and she clenches her fists.

Screams, once: “Mama!”

_Your father’s advice -- isn’t something you have to take to heart. Or it doesn’t have to be the only thing. You can walk tall but -- that’s not the only thing you can do, Noct. You have a gift. You have a gift and that’s what you have to remember -- you take this burden of your blood, your father’s line’s blood, and you rise. You rise, do you hear me? You rise, you fly, not because of these burdens but in spite of them -- that’s what it means, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you -- now there’s no more time --_

“How,” she whispers, “how, when you’re gone, you’re never coming back, you’ll never be here again -- ”

Down, down, she’s pressing in on herself, curling in like a useless broken shield, the structure of her body broken and battered, her heart in sharp pieces and every time she breathes it feels like she’s cutting herself open again -- she’s surprised her clothes are still clean, because she can’t stop smelling the roses and the blood and the ash and she’s -- walked through all of that, all of it turned into dust -- all of her mother turned into dust -- 

Hand over her heart.

She curses Bahamut, curses her father, curses the Kings and the Queens.

“Didn’t even get a chance, didn’t even get a choice, what more do you want from me?”

Grief and loss running through her, dull and razor sharp at the same time, blades in her blood -- she doesn’t even realize she’s still breathing, and that with every breath the sorrow is turning, turning, spinning out of her like a fine powerful thread and the thread grows stronger, the thread grows edges, the thread is lacing out of her and it draws, it turns into rage and -- the air, too, is growing heavier and heavier around her. Taste of falling rain on her lips, not the rotting storm of broken Galahd -- something much sharper, something much cleaner.

Flash of light that blinds her, even from behind her closed eyelids, even from within the shards of her heart and of her soul, and --

_Eyes up._

Every breath and every movement is agony, but -- she does.

And starts, violently.

Shadow in the jagged lightning. Frozen bolt, driven into the world, no farther than her own arm’s length -- the searing bright warmth of it, deadly, beautiful, as sharp as her mother’s eyes. Crackling blue, silent shattering power, like a door -- and the presence that she can almost make out on the other side of that lightning-door.

She opens her mouth and almost whispers -- not her mother’s name -- 

_Noctis, but not Lucis Caelum,_ says the voice that comes from that impossible lightning bolt. _Noctis of Eos. Chosen, but not by your father’s blood. Chosen, by your mother’s._

“I, what,” she stammers, no more than a child in the teeth of those words.

_Noctis Canopus. Navigator, guide in the night. Your destiny changes now -- if you will accept it. If you will seize it in your hands._

“And if I refuse,” she whispers. “What consequence could possibly be worse than -- dying to serve Bahamut -- fuck him and fuck you too -- ”

Her spiteful words trail away, as the voice speaks again: _You can turn back. You can turn away from this. But you will not know what you can do, if you took this chance. You will not know what your other path could be -- your own path. Not this false ordinance. Not this false destiny._

She laughs, bitterly. “And you’re telling me you know what my true destiny is? I don’t even know who you are!”

_I am the heart of Chaos -- I am the door between the forces of life and death. I am Balance._

“I don’t know you,” she shouts.

 _Your mother knew me, and asked me to make you Chosen. Asked me to make you Mine. So I ask you. But I grant you a choice, a true choice, and that is how you know I am not of these beings you call Astrals. I am apart. I judge them, too. I balance them, too._

And she shakes her head: she’s struck down, she can’t understand, she can’t believe -- 

_There is a burden thrown onto your shoulders, child, and it will drag you to your death on your own swords,_ and she almost thinks the voice might be mocking her -- but no, how sad those words are, and how the wind moans, and she’s crying again. 

_I cannot lift that burden completely. I cannot deny your destiny in full. But I offer you -- wings. I offer you the strength to resist the weight of your burden -- the strength to fly in the face of your burden._

Her mother’s words.

Pulse in the blue bolt, in the blue light.

The shadow of a hand, reaching out to her.

“I -- you’ll make me pay a price, too,” she whispers.

_There is always a price. But -- I do not demand the coin of your life. I do not demand your belief, and I do not demand your subservience._

“Then what do you want?”

_Take my power and fly, Noctis Canopus -- and help others. Lead others. Your name, and the truth of what it means to navigate. Learn that, and that is all my price._

“I don’t know how to do those things,” and she thinks of -- Ignis, of Gladio, of the boy from Niflheim -- could she lead them? Could they lead her? 

But -- to help people. She knows how to help -- stray dogs, stray cats -- but helping people, that’s another thing entirely -- 

The thought strikes her, like beads falling into her hands. The beads that her mother had worn in the long thin braid she wore forward of her left ear. Tiny spheres of crystal threaded down the lengths of the plaited strands, and -- at the end -- the large bead, chased in intricate lines. 

The actual beads have burned away with her mother.

But this thought, this command, this price -- 

She could do it. Be -- her mother’s child. Her mother’s heir.

Lead, as Aulea had done.

Help, as Aulea had done.

“She left me a gift,” she says, slowly. To herself, and to the voice speaking to her from out of the blue lightning. “She was trying to teach me about that gift.”

The pain still lives within her -- still grinds its sharp raw edges against her -- but there’s this, too: her mother, only the memory of her left in this Eos, and not just gone and turned into drifting ash.

And when she makes the decision, it hurts, it’s like a different weight within her -- but it’s a lighter weight, an easier weight.

_Because this is something you choose. As she chose before you._

“Okay,” she says. “Okay. Yeah. I -- I think I can learn that.”

She doesn’t need the voice to tell her to get to her feet.

_Take my power._

And Noctis takes the blue bolt of lightning in both of her hands.

It turns into a tall shaft, thin and almost straight, a lightweight staff -- 

All her life she’s used knives to warp with. Knives, and bladed objects, like swords and spears.

This is different. The grip. The amount of force she needs to throw it. The entire length of it.

She twirls the staff in slow circles at first -- and then it’s just like stepping into her mother’s weapon-forms, it’s just like dancing to follow in her mother’s wake, and before she can even really think about it she’s on the edge of the garden, she’s leaping over the railing, poised on that deadly edge and all of Insomnia sprawls out below her, the unimaginable height of this place, the unimaginable fall that could await her if this is all nothing more than a joke -- 

_Fly, Noctis,_ and she almost convinces herself it’s Aulea’s voice she hears, when she hefts the staff -- underhand grip, weight of it raised past shoulder-height -- 

She throws the staff.

Launches herself after it -- she blurs out into the warp and the weft of the world -- 

Away from Bahamut’s gaze, away from that silent curse, she flies.


	8. to remember you by

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An entire cohort of ffxv peeps were being sad about ffxv on a damn Saturday night. I got carried along. I made this. Original twitter thread and sources [here](https://twitter.com/ninemoons42/status/1099350530302738432). "Dewdrops at Dawn" extended version [here](https://t.co/LASUAUR9mX). Tumblr post [here](https://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/post/183005273616/an-entire-cohort-of-ffxv-peeps-were-being-sad).
> 
> After-the-canon-is-done fic, so all usual warnings for that apply.

Prompto can't sleep the night before the anniversary of the Dawn. (He hates that it's capitalized. Letters and case can't really describe the meaning of the date, not to him, but for everyone else it's a red date on a calendar and that's it.)

He tosses and turns for hours and then -- every year, he thinks, every year, even when he tries to drown the memories in drink and in worse things -- he gives up, throws his vest on -- yes, it's still the same skull-and-patch-and-plaid thing -- sends a text message to Gladio, a voice message to Ignis. (They're -- no longer in Insomnia, for reasons; Prompto has been the last to leave the city, entirely reluctant to leave, even though he can't actually stay and he's been telling himself to go for *years*.)

The message is the same thing every year, anyway. It's no longer as important as the ritual of actually getting it out and sending it. It always says, "Good morning Insomnia. Good morning Citadel. Good morning Crownsguard. Good morning Noctis." 

As he gets on his motorbike and travels into Insomnia, the responses arrive. Gladio's changes every year; this one says: "Tell him to catch us some fish." Ignis's is the same every year. "Tell him the truth." 

No one stops him when he gets to the ruins of the Citadel. (No one has rebuilt it and no one will dare, not when it's the one thing all three of them had agreed on. Noct is buried in there, and it will not be repaired, and the Astrals' idiocy will never be papered over.) 

The Citadel is most of the way to overgrown, and the spaces that led to the throne room are shattered roof and half-standing walls. Wildflowers and grass in what used to be the corners. The real miracle is the presence of flowers where the throne had been: a single stand of sylleblossoms, the only one outside the borders of Accordo; and, growing up the ruined girders and stone pillars, the twining vines and huge pale-blue flowers that everyone has learned to call kingsheart. 

Kingsheart will grow nowhere else but this one single place in all of Eos. Prompto knows that, because Gladio tried, because Ignis tried, and neither of them are in Lucis. Prompto tried too, and still only has the bare trellis in his garden to show for his efforts.

Camera out. He takes a picture of this year's flowers, and picks one single kingsheart flower to take away with him. The sylleblossoms he collects carefully, from the blown-down stalks, the wind-picked stems, and he bundles them together into a neat bunch. 

He stands before what used to be the throne for a long time. Doesn't talk. Doesn't need to. There's a photograph in his pocket and it rustles when he takes it out, and tucks it into the bunch of flowers. Every year, he prints out a photo of Noctis and leaves it here. 

The first time he'd done this, he had cried when he'd laid the flowers and the photo behind, because Noctis had been smiling so brightly and so unaffected, sitting on a dock with his bare feet dangling into river waters. 

That was years ago. Now he's gotten to another one of the photos that makes him cry: Noctis, on that last night, hands gone still on the little kitchen shelf, where he had been peeling apples and then stopped and looked up into the shadowed sky.

He doesn't know how he'd had the presence of mind to take the photograph, but there it is. There is Noct, weary, kingly, just a man and also just a boy, in the suit that had fit and not quite been right.

Prompto sobs as he lays his offering onto the worn stones, and says, as he always does, "Thank you, Noct. For all of this. For everything." And he walks away, and he holds his kingsheart flower in his hand all the way back to his little house, all the way back to his bed, and then he doesn't get up until the next day comes.


	9. how to stay (alive)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking of WOR promnis and feels during a very long and very tiring seven-day-work week, and I composed the initial draft of this ficlet longhand, and then -- I had a chance to work on it and I still have those feels now. Might as well share them with you :)

It isn’t about -- waking up -- not for him, not any more. Not since Altissia, not since the weight of those futures and fates and futilities suddenly dumped onto his shoulders -- all right, granted, he’d been fool enough to _ask_ for those things to fall onto him.

He’s just had to live with every single other consequence -- and oh, how it galls him, how it chokes in his throat, to have been granted all those foreseen possibilities and -- lose so many other things.

Even the idea of gentle pity rankles at him -- he’d resisted it, when he’d first (last) seen it, in a pair of soft half-divine eyes, staring at him out of a sweet wolf-wary, watching face.

He’d -- lash out at it now, at any possible opportunity, at any possible inkling.

Might be for the best that he’ll never be able to see those expressions on anyone else.

So, he’ll have to focus on -- all the other things that hurt. All the other things that ache. All the other things that dig into him, that claw into his focus and try to erode it.

The shift of threadbare pillows, of blankets that are more patch than the original material at this point. The bedframe that creaks, that still makes him think of getting spilled onto the rough-hewn floor -- he may have to be grateful that the thing’s far lower to the ground now, and there won’t be far to go, if it has to come to that. The white-noise whine and crackle of distant generators, distant power-plant machinery, that thrums and thrums in his worn nerves. The falling temperatures and the hiss of the draft, that even now makes him feel too small, too helpless, and he can’t stop the urge rising in him, to bare his teeth, to growl -- he’s not prey, he’s not, he’s not -- 

Warmth crowding into his side, suddenly. Thin shoulders, wiry arms, and even in the throes of his useless anger he has to stop and catch his breath, recognizing the feeling of bandages wound clumsy and loose around already-scarred wrists.

He catches one of those wrists in both of his hands and -- this, at least, is an instinctive thing that won’t wreck him any more than he already is -- he runs his fingertips over skin, over linen, over rips and tears and clumsy stitching and -- he pulls all of that up to his mouth and breathes. In. Out. Reverent and gentle, because he doesn’t have to try to be either one.

Not around this presence.

The voice that says his name, softly, unsteady. “Ignis. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I -- was happy to be woken up,” he says, and that’s all the truth anyway.

No matter if there are far too many aches in his bones, in his muscles, when he pushes himself up and out of the ragged bedclothes. The kinked muscle in his hip and its sharp protest, that makes tears flare up -- mercifully, only briefly -- in his eyes. The headache that’s taken up more or less permanent residence in the outer corners of the orbit of his left eye. The snag of broken skin on his forearm, fresh reminder of his most recent exertions, and the claw-swipe that he’d willingly taken, just to make sure Prompto and Gladio could get away without adding to their already extensive collection of scars and cuts and bruises -- 

So he’d taken the damage instead and right now, it still hurts.

He breathes against that dull lingering throb -- and too close by, he hears the soft sound of Prompto clicking his tongue. Chiding him, without saying a word.

He does give in to the impulse to press another kiss into him. “I am sorry.”

“Yeah.” Not dismissive, he thinks, he maybe knows.

Just exhausted. 

Just resigned.

Which is why he feels so grateful when he feels the brush of callouses against his skin, against the underside of his jaw -- the gentle pressure that Prompto’s exerting on him, that he yields gratefully to and -- the kiss that he expects is maybe a little rough or maybe even a little biting.

What he gets instead is the desperate whisper against his mouth of -- “I don’t know how much longer we can do this, we -- we can’t keep killing ourselves like this.”

His blood does run cold in his veins, then, and he can’t stop himself from clutching at Prompto’s shoulders. 

Certainty, and the hope of some kind of light and warmth, suddenly pulling away from him -- he desperately hopes not -- he tries to ask. Tries to get some clarity. “Can you tell me?”

“I think we’re -- really just good at self-sacrifice,” is what he hears, pressed into him between softer and sharper kisses. “I mean. You know me. You hated it, the very first time I said I’d be happy to take a hit for Noct. For you. For Gladio. You tried to hide it -- you tried to cover it up.”

“How well you knew me then,” and if the words are shaky, if he clings to Prompto as he lets them out, he’s not going to let up either. “How well you still know me now.”

“You -- you didn’t have to take that last one. You could have run.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t,” and Prompto is the only person in this world now, who’ll stay with him, even when he says things like these.

“No, I think we both know. You’ve -- nearly bled out for Noct’s sake after all. For mine. For Gladio’s. Idiots that we all are, pretty much,” and there’s a laugh that sounds like a punch in the gut. 

Prompto laughs like that far too often, these days. 

“I agree -- we are idiots. All three of us.” He chokes, a little, on the next words. “All four of us.”

“Why did we all learn the same lesson and why were we all wrong,” and now he’s fairly sure that Prompto’s crying. “Why didn’t we all learn the actual right thing?”

“Privileges of youth,” he offers. “Hazards of duty.”

“Maybe. Maybe.” Still the soft hiccuped sobs. “We have to learn the other thing. And soon. Or -- or we all make the same mistake and there’ll be exactly zero of us still left when, when Noct comes back.”

“I will need your help, then,” he says, and he reaches out to find the lines and the angles of that dear face -- he’s grateful he doesn’t have to stretch at all. Prompto is right there with him, pressed into his side, and here are the tears still tracing trails down his cheeks, here are the lines wearing in around his mouth, here are the scars over the bridge of his nose.

“Tell me what to do,” he hears Prompto say, softly, tear-thorned.

“Live,” he says, and maybe that’s all he ever wanted to say, to hear, to learn. “Not for Noctis. Not for -- these places, these people. Not even for me,” and he hears the half-begun protest, and shakes his head to forestall it. “No, listen to me, Prompto. You said it yourself. We learned the wrong thing, you and I and Gladio. We were not placed in Noctis’s service to tear ourselves apart for his sake. We were placed in his service to live, to fight by his side, to be his companions. 

“We were told to -- give our lives for his if necessary -- ”

“No one specifically told us to throw our lives away for his sake,” and he’s grateful, how immensely grateful is he, for Prompto to say what he was trying to say. To pluck the meaning out of his hesitations and -- go for the attack direct. “It was only ever a worst-case scenario.”

“To be fair to all of us, we seemed to land in one of those every time we got out of that car -- ”

“We were thrown into every single one of those,” and Prompto kisses him, gently, after that. “Yeah. Okay. I get it now. But -- Ignis?”

“Yes.”

“On one condition.”

He nods. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“Yeah you do. You’re gonna tell me to live? I’ll do that. But only if you do, too. And do I know how hard that’s going to be, because people made the mistake of -- convincing you there was only one way to live -- ”

“If it brought me to you, however, dearest -- then I can’t regret it, not for long, can I?” He tries to smile -- is surprised that it comes so easily now. “It brought me to you and I started to learn something from you. You did not even come to me to teach me something. I am grateful for your example and your light.”

A pause, and a fresh quiet sob. “Damnit you always say the best things. How do you do it.”

He kisses him, in lieu of an answer in words, and -- when he emerges from that kiss, from those kisses, he’s wrapped around Prompto -- or is Prompto wrapped around him?

“Stay,” he whispers.

“Same to you.”


	10. nice and accurate lovers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People on Twitter were kind enough to inspire me to do some Good Omens AU, heheheh. 
> 
> Ignis is the fallen angel, and Gladiolus is the non-fallen one.

It’s good to wake up, sometimes, he thinks, it’s good to cross back into the land of those beings who happen to need to breathe and eat and drink and -- realize that one has just been sleeping, that kind of deep-dark unconsciousness that probably should have been the place where dreams should have come from.

If only he could dream, but that’s neither here nor there, he thinks, as he glances at himself in the nearest mirror (the nearest reflective glass-pane, sliver of the world outside just barely visible in the midst of verdant bright growth and -- ), and his hair is already all in order and his eyes are sort of very slowly and very nicely shifting back into the appearance he bothers to keep up. Green, as green as the trembling stems and blades that he catches, moving, in the windows.

Moving?

And he cocks his head and -- sure enough it’s the building that clues him in. The shaking in the walls, the rumbling in the roof -- that latter is not so far from overhead, after all, and he’d fly up to touch it in a tice if he thought he could get away with spreading his wings in this place and -- he’s not going to do that. Too much fuss, tucking the feathers back in, putting the bones back in their proper places, and he’s not interested in having to explain the smell of singeing, of brimstone, that might linger too long in the corners of the room, not to mention his bedding.

So he contents himself with wishing the unwanted creases out of his shirt, with straightening the seams of his trousers, and he throws his favorite suit-jacket on and keeps the cuffs water-proof. The mister on the coffee table refills itself with a glance, trembling, and then he meanders over to the glassed-in doors to the tiny patio and -- 

Well, he’d expected the wind but not this rain, this gently welcome and cooling thing, the rumble of an oncoming storm. Musical thunder in its vibrations, and lightning fanning and fanning through the dense muck of clouds, dark dark mud-brown overhead.

Entirely unexpected. 

His kind of weather.

He mutters something under his breath and doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t know why he’s saying thanks, but he puts the mister down and laughs in the direction of his fear-shaken plants, and he says, “Lucky you, hm? A reprieve. Let’s all see how long that’ll last.”

And anyway there’s no one here to mutter basso-profundo chiding words, no one here to smile upon that lush quivering garden and -- wish a flower or two into existence.

That Gladiolus needn’t live up to his name, honestly, he thinks: and out through the front door to be met by an elevator, ready to take him downstairs and so he can begin his day. Maybe he walks slowly, just enough to feel the almost-impact of falling drops -- he doesn’t have to think that hard to make sure he doesn’t even get damp at all. To make sure his hair stays in the style he’s adopted for it today. Spikes so people don’t have to look at his eyes or his too-wraparound sunglasses, in the middle of the storm as it starts to moan more loudly. 

Unseasonable, but how to direct weather without making such an overly large production of it? He’s never been able to direct his energies that way. He’s more -- inclined now towards the tiny gestures. A little more rust in the world. A few more thorns in the feet of those who might already be so inclined. And if he makes sure such-and-such government lackey suffers a very small mechanical breakdown -- say, in his smartphone -- or some silly airheaded fake-news purveyor loses access to the Internet for -- one whole hour! -- that’s his purview and his own private little specialty.

His own little joke, and he hisses and chuckles to himself as he strolls languid and sure of his every step down the block and around the corner.

Not a drop of rain falls on him, not a spot of water even when someone drops a cup of coffee as he passes by, not even when some random black-chromed motorcycle skids to a classically hilarious pratfall-stop next to him: he merely raises an eyebrow, and doesn’t laugh out loud no matter how much he’s tempted to, and then he’s looking at a familiar door.

That is swinging open before he can even touch the pretty patina of the doorknob and -- “That was not by my doing,” he calls, into the snugness, into the warmth. The scent of wood-ash in the corners and the tiniest hint of metal on the back of his tongue, overlaid with leather and real vanilla -- not the kind that cloys, but the kind that shivers, that deepens, into a kind of smoke and a kind of must and it’s exactly the kind of scent he would associate with the shadow moving between the towering bookshelves. 

Here and there a pane of glass and behind -- pages arrested in their crumbling decline, and inks fading, but more slowly, and he almost wants to reach in and -- get a little of that vermilion onto him. The gold-leaf still lingering in illuminated letters.

But he has to change direction right in the middle of his stride, once he locates the scent of roasted sugar, of ground chocolate. Not a whiff of milk in the blend, just the overwhelming richness and the grit that lingers in the corners of the mouth, the dust of bitter pleasure, and he smiles and pulls off his sunglasses and cranes up for a kiss.

“Hello,” and that word is said just for him, in no language that living breathing beings should know. A word that almost visibly hovers in divine light, in soft flames of sanctity, and -- he smiles, catches at that word. His own fingertips, visibly elongating into talons that he scratches reverently over white collar and dark skin, the strength of an angle, the plush vulnerablility -- 

“Angel.”

The kiss is -- not new. Oh no it’s not. This existence has been so much more bearable since he stopped fighting the inevitable. The ineffable. That which cannot be fathomed by wings or haloes or the fire that can run deep and true and consuming, in the tang of a sword, in the length of a tire iron.

But he scratches the sharp edges of himself against dark soft hair, against trimmed stubble, and he whines for more, for deeper.

It’s not like he needs to breathe, does he? Not like his lover does.

And he opens his eyes to light-rays rising from dark hair. To amber flames in the depths of brown eyes. 

Gladiolus, in this form.

Not enough for him, not when he’s in this mood to tempt, and be tempted, and so -- he lets that other name rise from him, flawless cacophony of divine syllables and power. 

“Ignis,” is the reply, that is already distorting around the edges. Frayed word frayed name. 

Only one other being in this entire cosmos and all of those that have ever been created can call him his true name now, and he’ll answer to it, every time, on the instant.

Creators? Destroyers? What need has he of those?

The bookstore vanishes from around them, and the storm, and the world at large.

Smile that he knows is full of teeth and his own flames, his own shadows, mirrored in his beloved’s eyes.

“Be sure this is what you need,” he hears, and only his angel would think to warn him.

So he says, “Beautiful. You only needed to ask me once. After that I was yours.”

“I like asking.” That form before him unravels into gentle benevolent light and -- streams into him. “I like hearing you answer.”

“Then yes. Then you. I need you,” he says, and he lets himself fall into that light, into that glory, into that need -- 

And he’s happy to fall apart, on that breath as it carries his own true name, his own true spirit captured in strange sound --


	11. by their hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-compliant fic. Gladnis with a very small side-order of Promptis, and also inspired by [this tweet](https://twitter.com/ChilledFoodTin/status/1128494077903872000). *chef kiss*

Shout, coming from somewhere behind him -- he moves his head just enough to be able to look over his shoulder, and is nearly distracted on the instant because someone’s trying to punch him again -- _try_ being the operative word, and he heads that one off as quickly as he can, satisfying crunch of bones shattering along the side of his sole and he pivots as smoothly as he can, drops back into his half-crouch --

If the advantage of that is that he does get a good look at the incoming others, then, then maybe he can permit himself a small tight smile and -- 

Someone shrieks, off to his very near left, and he goes with his first reaction: he ducks, he weaves left and right and down and then he springs back up, both hands shooting for the unprotected throat. Fingers wide open, the better to let the sharp edges of his nails dig into his opponent’s vulnerable skin -- the scream is softer, more shocked, at this close range, and Ignis closes those hands into brutal fists, sustaining the choke-hold until he’s holding on to passed-out weight -- then he can drop that and go for the next -- punch, punch, jab with the right and uppercut with the left and finally whirl into a series of kicks, all low, getting the last man still standing in the thighs and groin and finally the center of the torso.

And Ignis blinks the sweat out of his eyes, looks down his nose at the six or eight bodies fallen to the concrete all around him, and -- shit, has he missed one more?

“Don’t move,” someone growls, a long way behind him.

Ignis catches his breath: he knows that voice.

Broad shoulders, and the lines of ink visible in the bared forearms, feather-shapes wrapped almost tenderly around and onto the collar-bones, points framing the hollow of the throat. 

There’s not a trace of blood on Gladio’s hands that Ignis can see.

It’s all up and down Gladio’s torn workout trousers, and he’s already stepped well clear of his own bunch of assailants, all of whom are in the same state as Ignis’s.

Between them they’ve got fifteen, perhaps sixteen, opponents, down and subdued and bleeding silently.

And the one man still left and still wide awake -- smells strongly of voiding himself, and Ignis knows the tremors still running through him, pounding past the adrenaline-rush. Disgust, primarily, and the wheels turning in his thoughts, wheels within wheels as he strides up to the man that Gladio is still holding at arm’s-length, and says, “I’ll only ask once: who is behind all of this?”

“D-don’t know we never saw a face -- ”

“Lying,” he hears Gladio say. “You want to do the honors?”

“Happily,” and Ignis smiles to himself as he turns away from the man, only for a breath -- before he’s spinning back around and now it’s his turn to capture that poor deluded soul, in his still-bloody hand, and it’s somehow easy to lift him off the ground. “You’ll start choking in a moment, and then I won’t be able to use you, because -- I’m not like him,” he hisses, cocking his head in Gladio’s direction. “He is the Shield of the Prince. He is bound by his promises -- and by his station in this world. 

“I’m not, and I will be more than happy to kill you, here, with my bare hands. So talk. I might even have some mercy on you, if you answer the question to my satisfaction. But don’t make me ask it again.”

That stink seems to intensify -- Ignis winces at the added insult to the air that he needs to breathe, in close proximity to this squirming not-quite-man anymore -- more like a worm, knowing its last moments have come, knowing it’s about to meet some kind of death -- but the words and the names fall out of him at last, and Gladio nods, when the name of one of the minor noble families is mentioned.

Which makes Ignis only the angrier, since there used to be sincere ties of affection between his family and that one, and the heirs of that family have been trying to make amends with him, and now he can see exactly what their motive for doing so is.

So maybe it’s unsporting of him to -- ram the man back into the nearest wall and say, “Go back to those people who hired you and tell them they have twelve hours to leave Lucis, or else suffer a worse fate than yours.”

“And where are we to go?” The words are shredded on edges of despair, of loathing. “Where can we find shelter?”

“What makes you think,” and that’s Gladio, who finally looks as angry as Ignis feels, speaking, “what the fuck makes you think this city will shelter you when you’ve been trying to tear it even farther down?”

And Ignis snarls, and lets the man go, reluctantly.

“Guys.”

He feels Gladio crowd in along him, and he feels the tension that they share, as they both turn back towards the mouth of the alley and -- oh, Noctis looks exactly as bloodied and bruised as them both and Ignis reaches, thinks about the armiger and tries to summon a potion -- 

“Not unless you’re using one on yourself,” and he only sounds quiet and small and worn-down.

“Your image?”

Bless Gladio for asking.

“I’m only human,” is all the response they get from him, before he’s -- squaring his shoulders and turning away. “Besides. My image can take something like this. The two of you, not so much. Can I trust you to -- find a way to get back discreetly? I’ll deal with everyone else.”

Ignis has to turn all the possibilities and all the choices over in his head -- and then he feels the hand close around his -- he all but snatches his hand away. “Bloody,” he says, and tries to be gentle, tries to apologize.

“Like I’m not? Come on,” and Gladio retakes his hand, more firmly, and -- leads him in the opposite direction.

Ignis looks back over his shoulder, once, and -- it’s a surprise, and it isn’t, to see Prompto holding him carefully. Walking away with him, or leading him away.

“He’ll be all right,” and that’s still Gladio, still a steadying presence at his side. “They will be.”

“Was I dreaming it, then, when you were teasing Prompto about his ability to throw a punch?” But he sighs as he says it, and doesn’t need to see the grin that briefly lights up Gladio’s face; because Prompto didn’t even need Noctis, or his protection, to be his motivation.

Ignis had recognized the grim determination in the lines of his face, the clouds in his eyes -- and he had simply offered more painkillers and a few hot and cold compresses for the wounded and scabbed knuckles, afterwards.

In silence, they make their way back to the smaller apartment that they keep for themselves, and there’s only a brief stand-off on the other side of the door before he pulls off his jacket and his gloves and heads straight into the bath, and he sheds the rest of his clothes before looking at himself in the mirror.

Patterns of fist-bruises rising on his shoulders and arms, but mercifully, this time, there are no marks on his chest to stand for the strikes that did get past his guard. His own mostly-unmarred face, if the droplets of blood still too warm and drying into hard crusts on his cheeks and around his mouth don’t count. The still-clean lenses on his spectacles.

Gladio squeezes in with him, tsks once at his own reflection, and looks at the tub that is still filling, the clouds of steam rising. 

Ignis doesn’t stop him when he tips in the entire jar of analgesic salts, and two generous shots of cold-pressed oil besides -- only sighs when it’s time to turn the water off, and he knuckles the flare-up of pain in the small of his back before getting in, as carefully as he can.

Gladio fits himself the other way, so they’re facing each other, and there isn’t much room for anything else, except for the washcloth that he sluices through the water and then wrings dry, that he passes over. 

“Thanks,” he hears Gladio say, softly.

He does the same for another washcloth, and places it on his head, and he has to make himself take a deep breath, before speaking. “You were right. Why didn’t I see this coming?”

“No one is expecting you to see the big picture and the little pictures all at once, and to keep it all straight.”

“I’m a strategist. It’s my duty.”

“They don’t work alone, and you know that. They work in groups.”

“Which we don’t have the luxury of,” he says, quietly, shamefully.

“There’s you. There’s me. Noct’s probably going to apply himself to the whole thing now. So -- time, we just need a little more time -- I’m aware we don’t get to get as much as we want. I know, so spare me the lecture.”

“I was not going to,” he says, after a moment. “I have a request to make.”

He feels the surprise, hears it in the small catch in Gladio’s breathing. 

“Name it.”

He reaches forward and takes one of Gladio’s hands in both of his own. “Teach me to hit harder.”

Cough, that almost sounds like a laugh. “You’re -- not joking. But you -- what you did -- ”

“I know what I did,” and he’s grateful he sounds quieter now. Smaller now, more carefully fitting into his own skin, steamed and clean. “We could all benefit from some improvement.”

“That’s not fair,” and Gladio’s still smiling, when he does look up. “Using my own words against me.”

“Will you?”

That hand detaches from him, and Ignis sighs, looks away -- until it lands on his shoulder, until it applies pressure, and he’s being reeled in for a kiss -- that he lets himself fall into, inexorably, gently. 

“You only had to ask,” and Gladio doesn’t quite release him. 

The water sloshes over the edges of the tub as he lets himself be rearranged, carefully cradled against Gladio, and only then can he close his eyes and let go.


	12. breathless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Schoolboys fumbling in a closet, inspired by a ton of sfw and nsfw キスの日 (kisu no hi, Kiss Day) art over on twitter.

Hand over his mouth -- that’s not quite a kiss but maybe that’s a start, he thinks, dizzy and needing and breathless -- literally breathless because he’s not sure he managed to finish inhaling, not when the door had opened so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and -- he’s not even sure that Noctis hadn’t actually _warped_ them the length of the classroom and thence into the adjoining broom closet -- if he concentrates he thinks he can still hear the echoes from the way they’d overturned chairs, a desk or two, getting the hell out of there -- 

Which leaves him where he is, with a sword-rough palm covering his mouth and his breath stolen clean away by the swirling hectic aftereffects of magic in Noctis’s eyes: the vivid spiral of magenta-red, slow to fade, and Noctis gone fey in the sharpness of his features, the tilt of his eyebrow and the twist of his mouth.

Oh, it’s too much, it’s too much, it’s too good -- Prompto feels his eyes roll back in his head with the sheer overwhelming presence of him, the sheer power he radiates -- it’s all Prompto can do to grab at his wrist. To tug downwards, once, twice: and that’s a signal they’d agreed on long ago. It doesn’t quite mean _stop_ ; and it doesn’t quite mean _keep going_ , either.

It sort of means, _I’m here_ , and it sort of also means, _you’re here?_

The effect on Noctis is instantaneous, anyway: his hand over Prompto’s mouth falls away. Blink, blink, and those storm-dark eyes gone back to their strange blue depths -- there’s the Noctis he thinks he almost knows. The Noctis he definitely feels, in this moment: burning warmth all along his front. The hard shadows creating strange planes and angles in his face, falling away as he catches his breath, too.

And Prompto smiles, when he feels the weight of Noctis’s focus return to him. The lazy sweet sweep of his eyes up and down, nearly as good and as knowing and as dirty as hands palming the buttons and the flies of his school uniform. 

“There you are,” he says, now that he can breathe properly, now that he can smile.

“I was here all along -- where’ve _you_ been?”

“Just -- thinking,” and he smirks when his own voice drops half an octave on the last word. He hadn’t even planned for that to happen.

And oh, what a sweet reward he gets for that happy accident: the visible movement of Noctis’s pupils -- contracting, and suddenly expanding -- the loll of his tongue around his own mouth, tip tracing out a damp line that Prompto really, really, really wants on his skin -- 

“Can’t read your mind, Prom,” and that’s a taunt if he’s ever heard one. The imperious cool knowing voice, and also the heat-fierce spike in his eyes. “If you want something, you can ask for it.”

“Why don’t I just show you?” But even as he lets the words drop, deliberately pushing back -- he traces a quick circle on the inside of Noctis’s wrist, spiral in and spiral out -- it’s the other part of their language, their little signs, because they use their words in so many ways and sometimes they sound like they want to hurt each other, and he knows it -- might be one of those things called a kink, he’s not too sure about it yet -- but at least they can signal to each other.

At least they can still share truths.

He waits, he has to, for Noctis’s consent: and it’s there, it’s really him and it’s really there in his eyes when he smiles, briefly fiercely sweet. When he nods, quick hasty jerk of his head.

It’s enough.

It’s real.

And Prompto gets his hands into the lapels of Noctis’s jacket, feels the almost-slash of pain in his white-knuckled grip -- yanks, and Noctis falls forward into him, teeth already bared and Prompto doesn’t hesitate in opening up for him. Mouth open, slack and welcoming and not passive because he’s kissing back, he’s tilting his head so Noctis can drive his tongue deeper, he’s trying and trying to haul Noctis closer -- 

Oh -- impact -- there really is a hand at his hip, slipping into the waistband of his boxers, and he shivers all over, hot and cold at the thought of it, and he hopes the little groan that he can let escape because he’s too busy kissing Noctis, too busy getting kissed by Noctis, sounds like encouragement.

Or, or maybe he’ll be allowed this, and he nibbles softly at the corner of Noctis’s mouth, just the way he likes to do it -- which is just the way that makes Noctis shiver and bear his weight down further into Prompto -- press of their bodies and the helpless little movements of legs and knees tangling, never mind that they’re still mostly upright. Hips mashed together, where they meet in the angle of the tight enclosing walls.

Maybe the wall at his back is all that’s keeping him upright, and he’s grateful because that means Noctis can lean into him hard and hot and hungry --

Soft wet noises and Prompto shudders as Noctis catches his tongue between careful teeth, just barely biting, just so Prompto can feel the edges of him.

More, more, he can’t get enough he’ll never get enough --

Keen soft mourning whine that -- must have come from him because he can feel the vibrations of it in his own throat --

“Not doing you here,” but Noctis follows up those words with his own hum, his own vibrations shivering against Prompto’s neck, the tender join to his shoulder. “Can you get it together long enough to get out?”

Prompto -- doesn’t quite laugh, and he knows it -- all he knows is the yearning scrape of the air that he pulls again into his starved lungs -- all he knows is the wobble in his own ankles, in his own knees, as he reluctantly puts himself back together, as he slips out of the closet with Noctis already halfway down the corridor -- headed somewhere more private.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a request for a promnis kiss on twitter! 
> 
> (I've been watching too much BTS lol. Prompto is not quite attempting to duplicate the dance moves from the DNA MV.)

_Focus!_ he tells himself, as he squares up once again to the corner and the intersection of the reflections. His own image, multiplied, in the bounce of the bright overhead lights, along these walls, along these mirrors. 

Headphones hooked securely into place so all he really has to do is to hit the controls on the little box in the chest pocket of his hoodie, bright flash of rainbow-colored sequins between the ribbed hems and the main warming section, the black-and-red lining of the oversized hood itself and the way it sets off the highlights in his hair, the deep green streaks running back from his temples, stark against the heat in his cheeks.

Click, and the track starts up again and -- ache in his shoulders, in his knees, in his ankles, in his wrists. Ache running along the inside of his left thigh as he turns out that knee and kicks out that foot. Ache in his ribs as he exaggerates the movement of his arm, contrasting and emphasizing the side-to-side footwork in this part of the dance. 

He can ignore all of that pain. Set aside all that distraction for later.

His own eyes fixed on their reflections as he keeps pace with the rising tempo, the increasing complexity of the choreography. Rolling movements from shoulders to torso as he winds up into an aerial kick, graceful as he can make himself be despite the sticking-out shapes of his bones, visible despite his layers of clothing.

The whole point is to make this look good, because he’s not a backup dancer, not precisely. He’s not supposed to be a supporting act for the singer of this track -- he’s supposed to help her bring the music to life, and at this point he already knows all the words and -- he still can’t find any kind of satisfaction in his own dancing. Still can’t find a good point to call the whole thing done and locked.

So he -- tries to riff, as he’d been told, as she’d kindly suggested. Go left-and-right instead of just going left. Shift his weight on his working foot, side to side. He even tries to do some kind of rapid-fire pirouette -- that doesn’t suit the aesthetic at all, not even his hoodie or the subtle honeycomb pattern on his dark-gray leggings -- 

Knock on the open door, and someone calling his name: “Prompto?”

“Hi,” he says, and he groans and slides down into a split, misery that he can feel in his joints as well as see in his face and its reflections. “I’m failing so hard today.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I wish you were dancing with me in this thing, Ignis,” is all he says, and then he sighs and lets himself pancake down neatly to the floor. Stretch and warming pull in his muscles. 

“I want to dance with you, too. But.”

“I know,” he groans, and he listens attentively to the muted uneven thud of approaching feet. Sprained left ankle, and for the sake of the rest of all the music in the world, all the dances still remaining, he’s going to have to stay off it for another three or four days.

Prompto has to dance tomorrow evening.

He’s going to have to get back to the practice, he knows, and he doesn’t want to move, not when -- Ignis is leaning into him. Feels like sprawl, the warmth of him too close and also too far. His layers and Ignis’s getting between them, trying to stay warm in the vicious climate control.

Brief pressure, moving over the back of Prompto’s head, and he leans a little toward those ghost-kisses, the shift of Ignis’s mouth in his hair, on his neck, on his throat. 

“I believe in you. You know that.”

“I hear a _but_ coming,” he says, and he reaches blindly for Ignis’s hand, and holds on to it, tight and unsteady.

He doesn’t want to make a fool of himself to Luna. To Ignis. 

To himself.

And he’d get up from here and keep working on the routine, keep working on his own flourishes. The movements to make the choreography his own, and not just a series of forms imposed on him.

But Ignis is breathing calm and gentle against his temple and he can’t help but cant in that direction, lean his shoulder partway into Ignis’s chest.

“That’s it, slower, slower, do you feel quiet now?” he hears Ignis ask.

He turns his head and presses a kiss to the warm dip of skin between Ignis’s mouth and cheek. “How is this supposed to help?”

No answer: just fingers firm on his chin, turning him, urging him into a proper kiss, mouths softly warmly working.

He’d drown willingly in Ignis if he could, lose himself and -- move, freely, weightless and completely unself-conscious.

How would he show that willingness -- in movement?

Or is the hand in his hair already giving him his answer, the gentle catch and brace of Ignis, the constant support of him --


	14. shelter me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was inspired to write Rule 63!Nyx again. By the same person who got me to do it the first time :D This is for [Hope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stopmopingstarthoping).

This is not what he expected, when he finally wins in his struggle against that damned recalcitrant series of locks, when he finally lets himself in through the door painted deep blue, when he finally slips out of the constriction of his boots: 

He’s used to the semidarkness of these rooms, and maybe he’s learned to navigate between the worktables and the neatly disorganized crates. Bits of cloth and things to go with them, and what feels like a brimming pincushion on every horizontal surface. What could one woman want with so many sewing pins, he wonders, somewhat neatly organized by their heads? What is the difference between the two machines that occupy what should really be her kitchen table -- unwieldy things, he thinks, but she does use them to create art, that just happens to be wearable.

He’s actually grateful for her chosen art -- he’d never have fallen into her orbit if it hadn’t been for Lunafreya, and the need for a dress to wear to a last-minute gala, feather-trains in beautifully matched shades of gray -- but it does make navigating her home, which is also her preferred workspace, a little bit tricky.

Especially as he’s coming to her now, closer to midnight, worn out and also still wired because he’s still spending too many of his waking hours wrangling people who will not -- at least -- agree to disagree on the conduct of a formal business meeting, and he’s only here because that very same Lunafreya had all but ordered him out of the office.

He’d pretended to snap back at her -- but he’d sent her an IM as soon as he’d gotten into his car: _I owe you._

_I’ll collect :)_

Past the gently waiting shadows, all the way into the innermost room of this apartment, all the way to the source of the golden light spilling out into the corridor, and -- 

He stops, and tries to figure out what he’s been hearing, what he’s not quite been expecting.

Piles of coverlets decorated in crazy-lines patchwork -- not his words -- and a vast throw in crochet to add color to the otherwise monochrome bedding. The pillows are comfortable, and some still smell like dried herbs, and he maybe has a particular preference for the firm ones, since they can provide better support for him.

But he’s not looking at those things, not right now: he’s actually looking at the person in the bed, and the way she’s huddled in all of those things. 

Nyx might look lovely in a brisk breeze, with her hair in its braids flying, with the way she sews her own coats and their tails and sleeves so that the material billows when she walks or strides or marches down the street -- but he knows, rather by dint of too much personal experience and proximity, how much she complains about that same cold. 

Not that _he’s_ complaining, himself: rather the opposite, he hopes, or he tries his best.

Which is why he quickly shakes himself out of his moment of staring. Strips off his tie and his sleeve-garters, his belt and the chain snaking into his pocket, on which he carries his keys and money clip, and he tugs gently on the exposed bit of her that he can see, which looks a lot like the leg of a pair of pajamas. “Hello,” he says, pitching his voice just low enough to be heard.

“Get in here,” is the answer he thinks he receives, but he doesn’t really hear the words because there’s a hand wrapping firmly around his wrist. Pull, and he -- hurries into the bed and doesn’t care how odd it might look.

He’s more concerned with wrapping himself around -- the lines of her.

The back of her neck smells like linen and faded lavender and he takes a deep breath, and something inside him feels like it settles, feels like it snaps into place securely, after having been jolted loose all day. Bare arms, mostly bare legs, she’s his kind of deshabille and he thinks he’d better tell her so, just as soon as he -- oh, here’s one of his favorite places on the entire planet.

He breathes gratefully into her shoulder. “I’m here.”

“You better be. I don’t know what I’d do otherwise, if you were some kind of stranger in my bed.”

He can’t help but laugh -- even when she twists quickly in the circle of his arms, even when he’s suddenly on the move himself without even thinking about stretching a single muscle. Weight of her rough hand on his arm, the familiar scars on her palm and on her fingertips -- the softness hidden in the depths of her eyes, that he likes to see almost as much as the mocking tilt of her mouth. 

“Kill me maybe. Not that I would be within my rights to complain,” he says. And: “All right?”

Shoulder, half-hitching into a shrug. Nyx looks weary and also most of the way to pleased, and maybe that’s a look he’s sort of missed on her, and he reaches out to her. Lets her rest her cheek against his hand, warm and soft. “I’m better. And you’re here, so that’s a plus, too.”

“Lucky I don’t have to go in tomorrow.”

“Lucky you’ll be making breakfast.” She doesn’t move, she doesn’t open her eyes, and she still looks sly and conniving and he chuckles, outright.

Pulls her down into a kiss. Welcomes the way she nips at the corner of his mouth. Lets her in, easily, softly, and the wonder of it all is that -- they do this, over and over, and they do this every way they want to do it, and it ought to be the same thing every time, or it ought to have turned into some kind of routine, or.

It’s not old hat.

Not a breath, not a sigh, not a whisper -- it’s different and it’s new and it’s good, every time, he thinks. Maybe he should come up for air. Maybe he should let her breathe -- but he can’t, he can’t seem to let her go. He can’t stop himself from tilting towards her hands, the way she’s pulling him closer. He can’t stop himself from pressing into her space -- he couldn’t tear himself away, he couldn’t survive that.

But he really does need to breathe: he really does need to recover from his day.

He still sounds disappointed when Nyx licks thoughtfully at his upper lip, one more time, and then tucks him into her pillows -- and then burrows into his side. 

He turns to her and catches at the loose strands of her hair, and says, “That makes another one for the list.”

“Why do you have to insist on owing me something?” Sharp, but sweetly so. Soft hectoring. He likes that very much about her -- it makes him feel like he owes it to her, to stay on his feet, to stay sharp. To keep up with her.

He says so. “Because you deserve someone who can give you as much as what you give.”

“It’s not a competition. Or -- barter.”

He opens his eyes just in time to see the tail-end of the expression she makes, after. Sneering, annoyed, and also -- somewhere in the lines radiating from the outer corners of her eyes -- understanding, eroded down to its very bedrock.

“I want to give you things,” he says, simply. “Because I appreciate you.”

Snort, quiet -- followed quickly by a kiss and he smiles, nibbles at her lower lip, and then her hand’s sliding down the placket of his shirt. Buttons coming undone.

That same hand that comes to rest over his heart, warm welcome weight. 

As is the rest of her, still pressed in against his side, and he sighs and mutters against the nearest part of her he can reach -- her collar bones -- it’s not the language he uses in his day-to-day work. 

And she responds, in her own mother tongue, quiet rough rasp in her voice.

He holds on to those edges even as he falls into sleep.


	15. waning moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A friend of mine led me to thinking about gangster!Ignis and this is the result.
> 
> Visual inspiration for the thing that Iggy's wearing, that isn't part of the suit per se, is [here](https://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/9375119612/trying-to-scratch-out-the-mental-image-of).
> 
> Not related to [vespers of Insomnia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13727460); they just share the same Mafia atmosphere. Think of this as a fork in the road, if you will.

The card in her hand finally -- gives way, she thinks, to her nerves, to the anger and to the grief still burning high and hot in her mind. Hot enough to wipe reason away and that is what has brought her here, still in her black mourning, though she has no idea where she’s lost the veil. She’d still been wearing it, when she’d been ushered into the unexpected sanctuary that was Lady Amicitia’s private office. The sprawl of the desk, and the pens and tablets scattered atop it -- the strange presence of a box lined in cream-colored material, bristling with pins and needles, and several spools of thread that were clearly in use, if the varying amounts still left wound on were any indication.

And out of that same incongruous box that lady had extracted a card, and passed it over. Solemn words in her sweet high voice. “My family and I were never truly linked to yours. But that will not stop me from offering what help I can give. It’s yours to do with as you see fit.”

The card, the card in her hand now, wrinkled as she tries to smooth it out, without much success. Perhaps the thick stock has something to do with that: making it resistant to crumpling, but making that same crumpling nearly indelible, once started. 

And in rich purple ink on the face of the card, a name and an address.

The very spot she’s standing on, now, swaying with hunger and grief, and the wind howls bitterly down the back of her neck and Lunafreya has no one and nowhere else to go.

Her brother, her mother, all that’s left of her family, slaughtered to the last man, and their bodies left in the ruin of the home where she had been born and raised. The same home she’d once had to flee in the dead of winter, under cover of a harsh storm; the same home that’s now a heap of ashes and shattered bone, and spilled blood.

She swallows the scream in her throat by sheer force of will, and clenches her hands into fists, and bangs them against the door, one ragged impact and the sound of it that’s muffled by the rain as it starts to fall.

Cold, cold, all the world is cold -- even the hands that reach out for her, from the other side of the door.

She blinks in the shock of the transition, suddenly standing now in a warm foyer and the golden light of lamps turned low. Real flickering flames in smoke-stained sconces. A fireplace in the corner, and the almost cheerful crackle of the blaze, and she -- she can only stare, longingly, until someone coughs quietly at her side.

“Hey. You want to sit?”

Drawl, rich rippling vowels. Maybe she was her own age, Lunafreya thinks, maybe a little older. Peach-golden glitter around her eyes, around her mouth, highlighted strokes on cheek and temple. Golden curls and gloved hands, carefully steering her to a couch, and it’s a relief to be told where to go. It’s a relief to be pushed down to warm squashy cushions.

She starts crying, and before she can fumble her sodden handkerchief from her pocket, the girl sitting beside her offers her a square of material. Torn edges, but it smells like it’s been freshly washed and ironed, and Lunafreya wants to apologize for -- for her tears, for the sobs that she can’t stop coming -- 

Doors opening and closing. Whispers from nearby, rising, and -- something about one of those voices is almost familiar.

She dries her tears as best as she can, even if there’s nothing to be done for the hiccup in her breaths, and the person pouring cream into a teacup is: “Noctis,” she says, shocked.

“Yeah. It’s me. You’re not dreaming. This is all real -- even this, and this is not your favorite tea, we’re just trying to make do, hope you don’t mind?”

His hands are warm around hers, and not just from the teacup he passes over. The delicate pattern of bluebells and twining vines. The weight of the cup and the rich scent of the tea -- he’s right, it’s not exactly her favorite, but the cream is right and so is the sugar and she drinks it down to the dregs and can’t quite make herself ask for more.

Fortunately he doesn’t seem to be waiting for her to ask -- he simply refills the cup, again doctored correctly -- and when he looks up and mutters at one of the doors it falls open, and Lunafreya stares again, at freckles and a small disarming smile, and the cart of covered dishes he’s pushing along, seemingly in a hurry. “Hi Luna,” that boy says, as he stops next to Noctis. As he threads his fingers into Noctis’s. “How long has it been since you last ate anything?”

She blinks at him. Gropes for his name, in the distant ruined memories of her past. “Prompto. You, too? Where is this place, and why are you all here -- ?”

“Sort of what we do around here,” but that’s the girl who answers, sweet edges in her smile, though Lunafreya doesn’t feel the least bit afraid of her. “These two didn’t even have the courtesy to introduce me? I’m Cindy. You’re Lunafreya. And you’re here because you had that card in your hand -- you got it from Iris didn’t you?”

“Lady Amicitia,” and she nods. 

“Lunafreya. I am very sorry for your loss.” 

And another set of doors opens, and two people walk into the room.

Noctis and Prompto spring upright, and incline their heads briefly; Cindy smiles, and does a little curtsy.

And Lunafreya just barely manages to put her teacup down properly. Just barely propels herself to her own shaky feet. 

Just barely stops herself from reaching out to that person, to the shape of him and the space he occupies in the world -- all the world in its grief and its rage that’s narrowed down to the crimson shadows of this room. 

This unlikely shelter, and the last place she ever expected to see Ignis Scientia again.

The colors of him are muted in this firelight, in this room -- but it has to be him. It can only be him. The unrelieved black of his suit, shirt and tie and layers, all the way down to the fingerless gloves, to the boots on his feet. A visible holster snug against his ribs, high up on his left side; she doesn’t even think about the kind of gun he might be carrying, because she’s looking for his actual favorite weapons, the ones he’d suddenly taken up at some point in their lives and then she’d had to watch him train with them -- the flashing sunlight on the edges of the blades, and the fact that he’d started out with actual live steel -- she even remembers the way he’d laughed, telling her about how his instructor had screamed at him for doing so.

And that’s when she spots the blades, exactly where they should be. The lines of them, sleek and lethal, and always part of the image of him that had remained in her mind after she’d had to go into hiding. One on each hip and just the right length to slash someone’s throat wide open with -- just the right length that he can sit and stand and move with them, and he looks like he can still do so without any difficulty.

The layer on top of all of these things is new, she thinks. Half-glimpses in the uncertain light, of the curving lines that look like stylized feathers. Dark, dark red and gold and black, and vast sleeves, is what she can make of it, very much like a cape that hangs off his shoulders, that pools around his feet when he’s sitting down.

New, and somehow it still fits him -- fits Ignis. The Ignis she’d known.

Ignis Scientia, whom she’d last heard of as only one name in a long list of casualties. People who had died in a bombing attack. Collateral damage. She’d -- sent flowers to the gravesite, to the memorial events, and she’d grieved in private for the loss of her friend, the boy who’d taught her how to dance and how to mix drinks. The boy who’d found the courage to come out to her, and then they’d become even closer friends, trusting each other with all their hearts and emotions. 

And it had all been -- right, all the evidence had been right, that he had worked in the building that had fallen, that had caved in on itself as the result of a particularly powerful series of car-borne bombs, that bits of him and his blood had been all that had been found to confirm his identity and the sad fact of his death -- 

“I didn’t die,” he’s saying now, and he’s settling onto the couch beside her, and the firelight illuminates him in the here and now and -- he’s not a ghost. He’s not a hallucination.

She’s sure of that because the image of him that’s left in her mind is young and laughing and carefree -- and the real person next to her has silver strands in his hair, and deep lines radiating from the corners of his eyes.

Scars, vivid on his skin, in the here and now -- the ragged red-brown of the left side of his face. The wedges torn out of his right eyebrow, the bridge of his nose, the corner of his lip. 

His eyes, undimmed and kind as they look at her.

Even as the anger swells in her, irrational and rash, and she clenches her hands into fists once again, and looks away.

Even as she sees Prompto catch her eye and then -- he’s extending a hand to Noctis, to Cindy. Does he know -- ?

“You,” she says, quietly, meaning it for Ignis. “You. How dare you survive and, and -- not be there to save my mother, my brother? If you’ve been around all this time then, then you knew. You had to have seen what was being done to them.”

She watches him close his eyes, hang his head -- 

“I was gathering my forces to -- raid the manor,” he’s saying, quietly. “I was planning to do to them as had been done to me. I -- we were too late. Lunafreya, I, I apologize.”

How dare he?

She leaps to her feet -- has the small mean satisfaction of seeing the alarm spring up in Noctis’s eyes. “You had the time to gather your friends, our friends, and not -- gather my family? You had the time to establish yourself, and not -- save my mother, my brother?”

“Hey.”

And the man at Ignis’s back steps forward.

All her words dry up in her throat, guilty and awkward.

Kindness in his eyes, worn and scarred, the same as in Lady Amicitia’s -- the same as in his sister’s open face. 

“Gladiolus,” she says.

“You can be emotional, that’s not the problem, you’re supposed to be that,” she hears him say. “But you can’t be, excuse me for saying it, ignorant. You can’t tell him he didn’t do anything. He did everything he could -- we did -- but will you believe us if we tell you your mother put us off? Stubborn, and you ought to know. You ought to understand.”

Shame burns in her eyes, now, like new and fresh tears. “I -- mother was -- ”

“She was. And I, we, could not do anything for her, until she relented. We didn’t expect for our enemies to move as quickly as they did.” Ignis is looking at her again, rage like deep shadows in his eyes. “I continue to suspect the household. Not Sylva or Ravus, but people who were close enough. And we are still hunting them.”

“I’ll hunt them,” she says, quickly. “If there really were traitors then it’s my right, it’s my duty, to find them and deal with them.”

“Why do you think we’ve brought you here? You will need to remain alive to do what you wish to do. We can -- do our best by you.” He’s getting to his feet -- he’s opening his hands to her.

She grits her teeth. “I -- I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

“Gladio was right,” she hears him say, in immediate response. “You need that anger if you want to survive. You need that anger if you want to find those people who sold you and yours out. But -- as for the rest -- ”

“I’m sorry,” she says, softly. “I’m sorry. I lost all of the people I loved and, and you lost them too, Ignis.”

“If you want to avenge them, if you want justice -- we can give you some kind of help. There are others who might have -- more people, more weapons -- you are free to associate with them as you wish. But here -- you’ll always have shelter, here. And allies. I and mine,” and she watches him indicate all the others in the room. “We will stand with you, if you’ll have us.”

That -- that’s too much kindness, too much forgiveness -- the world blurs out to her in a rush of tears and she -- takes a step forward, and then falls against him. Her sobs muffled in that thing he’s wearing, and the material of his waistcoat and his suit jacket. “Ignis,” she whispers. “They killed them all.”

“They did,” she hears him murmur. “I would hunt them for you.”

“I’ll do the hunting. I -- I’ll need your help.”

It’s harder to say that. It’s easier, in this firelight, with all these faces that she knows. 

“You’ll have it. Now and always.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry I was mean to you,” she sobs. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for them or for you, but now -- but now we can do something. I can offer you something that I didn’t have before,” and his voice is rough, too. Maybe not just with tears -- because she looks at him and he looks like her old friend, like her partner in crime, like her co-conspirator. “If you’ll have us.”

“Yes.”


	16. burn rubber, die together like lovers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A 40s!Noctis and 30s!Prompto story -- and that's because I wrote this for my Shadi.
> 
> song inspirations: [driver's high](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lB0oBcgHFQ) // [ordinary world [cover]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9koQo3i6ZLI)

It’s -- not the kind of rush he should still be enjoying, he thinks -- that fleeting strange dizziness that chases his thoughts, that chews on the ragged trailing edges of his mind, as the night falls deeper and deeper and he thinks he can still smell gunpowder and the flight of his own sweat, as he’d swayed ecstatically in his own little corner of paradise, mosh-pit screams and flailing arms and legs all around him.

It’s not the kind of rush that becomes him, or the widening streaks of colorlessness in his hair, or the silver creeping in steadily along the edges of his stubble -- things he can’t control, can’t fight off, can’t pull away, and so he has to live with them, reluctantly, and so he has to carry them right out where everyone else can see them.

As blindingly obvious as the lines on his face, the deepening widening, the years and years of his emotions wearing through, despite all the masks that he’s worn since childhood, all the masks he’s carried around with him like old friends and old baggage, creaking in the joins.

But here’s the thing that’s even more obvious, the thing he’s literally holding on to with all of the strength that still remains in him after -- shouting, singing, keeping his footing at all in the maddened rush of the dance, the musical howl of the night and the concert and all the people brandishing neon-lit sticks flashing -- here’s the person in control of his movements, here’s the person in control of the throttles, and -- Noctis can feel laughter that’s not his own, can literally feel those bright hooks catch in him, and all he wants is to throw himself wider open, wider and bared, and -- 

All he can do now, is mold himself into Prompto’s back: the wiry build of him. The places where softness still clings to him, in the years of plenty and in the years of struggling against the world and against himself, the places where Noctis can lean in closer and breathe out the words that are torn from him anyway, in the wind of their passage so maybe Prompto can only feel them and not hear them at all.

Words of the last song of the night, and the vivid arc of the singer as they’d fallen back into a perfect arc, and every verse had been a challenge to the overhanging clouds, to the cold distant stars, to the faintly mocking curve that the moon had made in the western sky, all the way to this:

“Run! Run from this world!”

And maybe he manages to get the message through after all -- he opens his eyes against the irrational fear of the rush of the wind, the slap of falling temperatures onto his chapped cheeks -- he’s wearing a helmet after all, they both are, properly kitted out in full riding gear like they’re following the laws of the road.

That’s what he’ll say, if anyone challenges him -- he’ll say that, and then point to the ruin of his knee, and then that will be that, he hopes.

The thought careens away from him as Prompto turns the bike smoothly into a long, long left-hand turn -- his knee, Noctis’s knee, the armor of them air-kissing the stinking asphalt and its day’s fumes, its day’s rubber -- he makes it look like it’s thoughtless, like it’s grace, like it’s the pure sheer expectation that they’re not going to skid right off the road and wind up in a tangle of broken limbs and shattered glass -- that in and of itself fuels that unbecoming grin once again, and Noctis starts laughing, softly, hopelessly.

Prompto arched beneath him into a steady line of drive, of determination, even though he’s got to be as tired as Noctis is, or may even be more so. He’d been on stage after all, dancing a little, from side to side, but entirely focused on the thrum of his bass guitar. The battered beauty of it, the scratches and the long-faded stickers; the long lengths of blue ribbon he ties just below its head and the supple leather of the strap on which he carries it. The slap of his hand onto the strings, or the nimble manipulation of the same, when he happened to be strumming instead. 

They’d danced, or at least tried to dance in the crush of the mosh pit, clinging to each other for the first half of the show because they didn’t even have space to separate -- and then Prompto had taken his leather jacket off and left it on Noctis’s shoulders, so he didn’t have to worry about sleeves and collar getting in the way as he took the stage for the second half.

Somewhere in Noctis’s bones is the unexpected thrill of Prompto’s voice, joining the lead singer’s for that last song. The unexpected harmony of them, easy and fluid registers, and the words falling from them that had held the entire venue spellbound in silence -- until, of course, they had both screamed into the final lines -- and Noctis had heard Prompto drop out very clearly, very cleanly, so that the singer could have the moment of the lights going out with a cannon-blast roar. 

That voice, roughened by the years, deeper and sweeter, the voice that calls Noctis out of his nightmares, that calls Noctis’s name and pulls him back into the world.

As it does now, when Prompto says, “Almost there!”

And there is -- where are they, exactly? Out of the city limits again, headed towards the seaside again. Long rolling hills lying in dawn-shadows -- and Prompto heads upslope, and the road narrows and narrows until -- it ends completely, in a track and a footpath that winds up to -- 

“You old romantic,” he says, the moment they’re still, the moment he’s sure that the adrenaline rush has passed enough that he can manage something small, like undo the buckle on his helmet. Armor falling away piece by piece. His movements are still a little jerky, but the instant he frees himself from the additional weight of reinforced plastic and metal, he reaches for Prompto -- who grins at him with all the lines in his own face, all the surfaces of him that are almost as weathered and chapped as Noctis’s.

“Like I was going to miss this opportunity. Also, who’re you calling old?”

It’s true that maybe Prompto can still -- wear disguises Noctis wouldn’t consider. A little concealer, a little highlighter, and his genes take care of the rest. Glitter in the corner of his eyes so he can stand out on stage, too, in his own more subdued way, and the thing he wears every time: the vivid streak of copper-metallic lipstick across the bridge of his nose, the remnants of which leave gold-glitter dust in his freckles.

The same freckles that Noctis kisses, now, mapping them anew, remembering them with his mouth, with the fleeting touch of his fingertips, and Prompto -- in his arms -- steadying him, holding him in place, and he almost would call this swaying together, their old bodies, their old souls, slow-dancing out in the middle of nowhere.

The shadow of this tree. The shadows of this hill, and the point where the track ends. The point where their present kiss ends. The point of this place, that is still marked by the little stone he’d planted all those very many years ago. The crystal-blue of it, stark contrast that it had been to that summer’s end sky, and the chip that he’d painstakingly knocked away, with the patient application of other stones.

Rough-hewn dome of that exact same stone, barely visible in the night and in the grass but Noctis’s eyes are drawn to it all the same, knowing what will happen if he turns it over.

Broken in two and the other half of it is --

Well it’s in Prompto’s hand, right now. The chips in it, the line worn into the heart of the piece like something’s been taken out of it, like something’s broken through into the very core.

Little bit on the nose for this whole thing they’ve got going on: ridiculous, for the two of them and their lines and their silver hairs and their scars.

Ridiculous and real and the right thing to be holding on to, and he reaches out with his left hand -- with the ring on that left hand that carries his chip from the stone, in the interior of the band -- and he pulls Prompto close and into the next kiss, and the next, and the next, and he breathes out nonsense loving words in all the languages he’s ever been taught -- he’d had to learn, so that he could stand at a long table and growl his way through stupid meaningless arguments, and now he can put the skill to much much better use.

The words fall away, the world falls away, and he’s grateful for the kisses, for Prompto’s warmth: weight of everything else that drops off his shoulders and off of Prompto’s and -- why is Prompto pushing at him and why isn’t he moving yet, why is he pressing closer and why is Prompto making him move back towards the motorbike?

The bulk of engine and fairing and throttles, the saddle still radiating their heat and the remaining adrenaline of the concert, and -- 

Prompto, on his knees before him.

Noctis blinks. “I’m -- supposed to be doing that. I promised you -- ”

“So?” Edges in that grin: the beautiful snarking sweet man before him. The beloved, the one point of actual reality in this night of sensory overload. The steady grounding of his hands on Noctis’s hips. The starlight, fading, falling into the gorgeous shadows of his eyes, icy faint gilding along his freckles and the lines in his face. “I just wanted to go first.”

“Not complaining, but can I ask why?” The words, the words that he has to chase. The breath that heaves and catches in his throat and is nowhere near enough for him to stay coherent: already Prompto is tracing kisses down, the lower reaches of his chest and over his belly, over his clothes and yet Noctis is shaking himself apart. 

Over his flies, the scant sliver of his bared belly, the band of his boxer-briefs and Noctis is torn clean down the middle between keeping his eyes open, and closing them.

Prompto like this, luminous, wicked.

It’s almost embarrassing how he gets even harder, blood-rush, lust-pulse, just from this, just from -- the point of Prompto’s tongue, peeking out and then -- tracing teasing lines into his skin. Moving slow, moving low, the hand that draws him out is rough and the mouth that wraps around him is bliss.

He has to fight to focus on the sounds of Prompto, the twist of ecstasy on his face, the gentle sharp insistence of him like he’s determined to make Noctis fall.

And that’s what he wants too -- as much of it as he can. As long as he can hold out --

Breath and breath and he wraps his left hand again around the back of Prompto’s head, just to feel him, the excited broken huffs of him, how can he be getting off on this when it’s Noctis who’s getting this perfect gift, this spiral, down and down and he shouts, when he breaks, the garbled syllables of Prompto’s name in the world -- 

The rush of himself in this world, completely alive, completely here, jittering in his skin and that’s, that’s all he wants, hang _deserve_ \-- he’ll apply that idea to Prompto as soon as he can gather himself back together --

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/) \-- or, hey, if Tumblr becomes too rotten and we can't talk there any more, there's always Twitter, where I am @ninemoons42.


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